A Sputtering End To The School Year

Life is funny. Around the beginning of April, I had this schedule all ready. I was going to be done with school before Memorial Day, it was going to be great.

Then our house caught on fire.

It is so hard to get back into your life's groove when everything is so suddenly interrupted. We missed a couple of weeks of school, and the lessons that were so easily begun at 9 have now become afternoon classes.

But I'm finally starting to see the end. We have 3 more math lessons. My dd's birthday is coming up very soon and I'm not teaching reading past that date. Those are our most difficult classes.

I really enjoyed BJU's Vacation Stations last year. It only took about 15 minutes a day, and last summer dd seemed to blossom under the program. At the beginning of the summer she could sound out individual letters, but she couldn't blend them to form words. By the end of the summer, just by reviewing what she already knew, she had gotten blending, and I was confident enough in her abilities to put her right into Reading 1.

So we're getting Vacation Stations 1 this year, and we'll start that the week after her birthday. We won't be finished with Bible or history (we have 10 lessons of each left), but both history and Bible are not intensive classes, and they have information that I'd like to teach before we hang it up for the summer. I'm hoping that Vacation Stations will reinforce all the addition and subtraction facts that dd has been learning all year, as well as reinforce all the reading that she's been doing.

We picked up the items for the summer reading program at our new local library today. Dd's all excited about that.

I wrote earlier today about the faithfulness of some of Judah's kings... or in their case, how their faithfulness sort of went to a sputter in the latter years of their lives. I think that homeschooling requires a great deal of faithfulness. You just have to keep plugging away at it. It takes faithfulness, especially when things are going well. If I hadn't been on schedule when our house fire happened, it'd be very difficult to catch up, or I'd have to teach reading and math all summer.

Last year, we were able to end our school year in April, for a very long and enjoyable summer. This year is seemingly ending in a sputter. First the math goes, then the reading goes, then we slowly morph into our summer schedule while tying up the loose ends of history and Bible. But I guess one great thing about homeschooling is that you can be flexible in this sort of way if you want to.

Homeschooling Infants: Signing Time is Paying Off!

Most homeschoolers realize that children don't just learn between the hours of 8 and 3. Kids learn all day long. My daughter learns about history and geography at bedtime when I read to her from Little House On The Prairie. She might learn math at the grocery store. While we have formal learning, it doesn't stop there. Since I'm her sole teacher, if I can find ways to integrate learning in the rest of my daughter's day, I will.

The same is true for age. Kids don't start learning at 5 and know everything they need to know by the time they turn 18. They start learning at birth. In fact, they learn at a more rapid rate when they are younger.

Although my homeschooling efforts are currently focused on my daughter, I also have an 18 month old. As he gets older, I can do more "formal" learning with him. Not really formal because we don't have a curriculum that we use yet, but I can tell him what a train is, or a fish or a bird, and he'll pick that up from me.

I've been trying to teach my son sign language since he was about 3 months old. I wasn't expecting him to sign with me at 3 months, I just wanted him to start getting used to it. I haven't been the most consistent person in the world at it, but I kept on plugging away at it.

At around a year old, ds started picking up a few signs. He first signed dog, then he learned fish. He started signing milk and pointing to his mouth to tell me that he was hungry or thirsty (I just had to guess). It's very nice to have your baby be able to tell you what he wants.

Now he can tell me a lot more about what he wants or is thinking. Just today he made the sign for water (he doesn't do it correctly, but I know what he's trying to do) and I knew that he wanted something to drink. He will also make that sign when he sees a lake. We went for a walk and he heard an airplane, and made the sign for plane. Just a couple of days ago, he heard dd running the water in the bathtub to get her hair wet, and he made the sign for bath.

I have to thank the people at Signing Time for their great DVDs. They have catchy tunes and are made with children in mind. I'm glad that our library has them, although they tend to be a hot item and are often gone. Our local PBS station is now showing Signing Time on Sundays, so I have Tivo set to record it.

Dd has picked up on sign language too. She's getting pretty good at it. :)

Why My Daughter Hates Math

I have known that my daughter's least favorite class was math for some time now. I thought that it was too hard for her and there was too much work involved. After talking to her about it, I have discovered that instead, it is too easy and there is too much work involved.

I thought that the time might come where this would be an issue... school was incredibly easy for me as well, and I had trouble with all the "busywork" that the school gave me (aka homework). I was very bad during middle school... we had one math teacher where you corrected your own paper, so you could erase the date on yesterday's homework and turn it in the next day. If he'd write the grade on the paper in pen, you could draw a picture over the grade and turn it in again that way... I was bad, lol. Anyway, despite my aversion to homwork, I would ace the tests and even did well in a math competition that my school took part in.

I didn't know that school being too easy would be an issue when my dd was 5. I don't remember school becoming too easy until around 4th grade. I'm glad that I started Math K when my daughter was 4, because Math 1 is easy for my 5 year old. And looking ahead, Math 2 has a lot of review to it and will probably be easy too.

I told dd that I was making her repeat handwriting 1 for another year because she wasn't doing very well at it... she got very upset. She told me it was easy and she was bored with it. But she writes on her handwriting pages so sloppily. I told her that I wouldn't let her move on to handwriting 2 unless her writing improved and looked nice. Wouldn't you know, her handwriting pages improved 100% that same day.

So far, reading is not too easy. I don't think that it is a challenge any more... but so far it is not too easy with not too much busywork. But I suspect that at some point reading will get that way with her as well. We've primarily focused on phonics this year, and there's been a smattering of grammar thrown in. She already knows what a homophone is though, thanks to a VeggieTales song on the subject, and I think that once we start introducing grammar topics, she's going to get it quickly. I remember when I was in school, it seems like they introduced nouns and verbs every year... boring...

Now that I have this new revelation, it makes some things easier for me, and some things more challenging. I now know that I can skip parts of certain lessons and not feel bad about it. I don't have to make her do every single problem, every single day. School is going to take up less of the day this way. On the other hand, I have to make sure that she is getting enough work. At some point, I may want to supplement her school work by giving her extra subjects to learn or having her read more books on her own. I want to instill a work ethic in her, but I want her to have something meaningful to do.

I figured that it could come to this point eventually, because not only was I bored in school, but her dad must have been bored in school too because he has told me that he cut class a lot and still managed to get As in his schoolwork... and he was on the Dean's list at ASU last fall despite rarely studying.... but I didn't figure that this would happen at age 5 with us. I guess this is another good reason that we're homeschooling. Not only would dd get into trouble all the time because she'd be talking to her friends all day, she would also be bored with the work... especially considering that we're already one year ahead of what her peers normally would be learning.

Teaching degree to homeschool?

A recent California decision could make it more difficult to homeschool in the state of California. A judge decided that you had to have a teaching certificate to homeschool.

To an outsider, that might sound pretty good. Doesn't a teaching certificate teach you how to educate? Don't we want our homeschool parents to do the best job possible?

I actually thought about going the teaching certificate route when I considered moving to California. But other than perhaps fulfilling a few legal requirements, a teaching certificate would not prepare anybody to homeschool. In addition, the homeschooling teacher would have to become more prepared than ANY public school teacher out there, because in order to become certified to teach a child from Kindergarten to 12th grade, you would need to receive ALL of these certifications:

Elementary School Teaching Credential
- get a bachelor's degree
- complete a multiple subject teacher preparation program, including student teaching
- pass the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment
- the initial certification lasts for 5 years, within that time period a teacher would have to also need to complete additional requirements for a clear credential, which would allow them to teach their second child

Earn a Single Subject Teaching Credential for all required California high school subjects
* English
* Mathematics
* Social Science
* Biological Sciences
* Physics
* Languages other than English or art
* Physical Education
- get a Bachelor's degree (well, at least you have one from certifying for elementary school)
- complete a single subject teacher preparation program including more student teaching
- achieve a passing score in the subject examinations for all 7 required teaching areas

There are a few other hoops that need to be jumped through, involving English proficiency (perhaps for people that might need to homeschool ESL students?), constitution courses, and computer skills, but you get the idea.

I'm sure that 90% of public school teachers do not have all those credentials, but that's how the state of California is heading. A homeschool teacher would have to spend more time jumping through hoops than she'd have to do in actual teaching time!

What would a teaching certificate get you, anyway? Would it help you learn to teach your own children? Not much. Teaching programs prepare you to teach a large group of children. It helps you manage a classroom. Is all that student teaching that a homeschool mom would have to go through help them at all when they're sitting down at the kitchen table teaching US History to their 7 year old? Probably not, unless perhaps she has 30 children in school. Not even the Duggars are close to that (some of their kids are already grown).

I am not completely opposed to having homeschool families have some sort of... education. Perhaps a child development course in the earlier grades? Maybe a course on how children learn? Perhaps a basic proficiency test. But to require someone to receive 8 different teaching credentials in order to teach 1 child (or maybe a few more) is ridiculous. Teaching credentials designed to teach someone how to manage classrooms and teach multiple children are useless in the homeschooling environment. And it's ridiculous for this judge to make the comparison. I don't need to learn how to become a mechanic to learn how to put gas in my car. Neither do I need to learn how to manage a classroom of unruly high schoolers in order to learn how to teach one (hopefully well-mannered) child of mine English.

HSLDA Needs You! Please sign their petition.

If you are a homeschooler or a friend of homeschooling, please sign this petition at the Homeschool Legal Defense Association web site. Currently, the Supreme Court of California plans to publish the appellate court opinion that I commented on earlier. The ruling basically stated that it was illegal to homeschool without a teaching certification. If that happens, any court in California could use this ruling to prosecute other homeschooling families in the state.

Depublishing the opinion is what HSLDA recommends at this point.

Although I don't live in California and many people do not, the rights of homeschoolers everywhere should concern us at least a little. Please take the time to sign the petition. Thanks!

Why We Didn't Move To California

Me and my husband met in California. I went to college in California. My husband grew up in California. But when we were living in Italy, and I was getting out of the Navy, and could move anywhere in the United States that we wanted to, we chose to move anywhere but California. Why? Because they like to harass homeschoolers.

A few years ago, it was in the news every fall. Someone would be told by their school districts that homeschooling was illegal and they were required to send their child to public school, yadda yadda. This happened for two or three years in a row. For the last couple of years it's been quiet. But now, California has a new harassment case in the courts. What a surprise.

Many people who have been keeping an eye on education know about California State Bill 777, which requires public schools to actively portray homosexuality and homosexuals in a positive light. Several family and religious advocacy groups have been encouraging people in California to pull their children out of public schools as a result.

Recently, a California judge has ruled a mother of 8 to put two of her children into public schools.

In this case, the parents were following the laws, which in the state of California require you to either a) establish a private school, b) have your child taught by an accredited teacher, or c) have your child homeschool under an umbrella school. The family in question had been using option c to homeschool. Since no laws were being broken, why are these people being singled out?

The judge says that keeping the children at home deprived them of interaction with people outside of the family, people that could help if something was amiss in the family, and the ability to develop emotionally into a broader world than their parents "cloistered setting."

None of the judge's arguments are a part of the law. He is just legislating from the bench. While it is good for kids to get out and make friends, that's not part of the law.

I like our laws here in Arizona. Tell the people that you're homeschooling when your child is old enough to go to school, teach them, and you're good. I haven't heard of any recent cases where parents are being harassed in this state either. And I do get my kids out to be with other people. This week, my daughter has played with her neighbor friend, played with her friends at church, been to Sunday School, and spent the afternoon playing with some more friends and evidently pouring sand all over her brother's hair in the process (somehow he had bucketloads of sand on his scalp yesterday). We would have been to the library as well, but my car battery needs to be replaced and so it's not working right now.

Hopefully, this case will get overturned on appeal. And hopefully, what happens in California stays in California. If not, I'm already throwing around a few alternatives if things do become hostile to homeschoolers in Arizona.

Is Customized Education The Future?

My daughter is 5, and I'm starting to teach her double-column addition. She also is progressing pretty well with her reading. Today she read a story that included the passage "One day Gray Fox and Trapper Joe rode into the camp. The men were not surprised to see Father in bed."

My daughter is not a genius. Far from it. When she was 13 months old, we had her tested for learning deficiencies. In some areas, she tested at the level of a 3 month old. In most areas, she tested right around that of a 6-9 month old. I could have pursued state help for her, but we were moving from Italy to Arizona at the time, so I never got around to it. I still have the paperwork though, more for a good laugh now than anything else.

At 26 months, I started taking her to Kindercare. She started to catch up, but she was still behind most of the other kids. While most of the other kids in her class learned their colors several months before they turned 3, I was beginning to think that she wouldn't learn her colors until after she moved into the 3 year old classroom. A couple of weeks before she turned 3, she figured out her colors.

When she was 3, she started learning her letter sounds, like all the other kids. But then at 3 1/2, we started doing something that would eventually lead her to learn adding 2 column addition and reading simple paragraphs before she left what would normally be her Kindergarten year... I started teaching her individual instruction and letting her learn more at her own pace.

A lot of kids stall at letters, numbers, shapes, and colors until they're most of the way through Kindergarten. Towards the end of Kindergarten, they often start blending and learn sight words. In your typical Public School model, it's necessary to do this. Not every kid comes to Kindergarten learning colors, shapes, numbers, and letters, and so the whole class needs to be taught all these things, even if they learned all of this back when they were 3 years old.

At four years old, I left Kindercare and my daughter was being taught full time. We went through a Kindergarten math book. We skipped past several lessons because they covered things that my daughter already knew, and I didn't see the point of reteaching it. Before she turned 5, we started the 1st Grade Math book. She wasn't really ready to read words yet, but we worked on some Now I'm Reading books... these are really great. By the time last fall arrived, she was already 30 lessons into her 1st grade math book, and was ready to start the 1st grade reading book.

So what was the difference between a 13 month old that was testing in some areas as a 3 month old, and a 5 1/2 year old getting ready to finish a year of 1st grade work? Customized education. As a homeschooling student, she is able to move ahead when she is ready, and spend extra time in areas that she has trouble on. With our current public school model, customized education isn't exactly feasable. All the kids in a particular class move at the same pace, doing the same lesson on the same day for the entire year.

In the early days of public education, children could learn at their own pace. The one-room schoolhouse would have several different grades in one room, and they would do a lot of learning at a pace that suited them. Most homeschools with more than one school-aged child use the same model today.

Although public schools currently move everybody along at the same pace, they don't necessarily have to. And sometimes they don't. When I was a kid, they had one classroom that was a grade 2/3 classroom, where the exceptionally bright 2nd grade students went to the same grade along with the 3rd graders that needed more help. We all went to different classrooms, based on levels, for our reading classes. We even had individual reading times where we read booklets at our own pace, and moved up in levels. As children get older, they might find themselves in remedial classes, gifted classes, honors classes, or AP Classes. In high school many students pick and choose their courses, and might find themselves, in their senior year, taking Calculus 1, or Algebra II. Some high schools have programs where you can be dual-enrolled at a local community college, and you might even be able to finish your associate's degree before you reach age 18, if you are motivated enough.

All those programs, for all those different classes, cost money. Today technology can make learning even more customized in a more cost-effective way. As a Senior in high school, I took Russian via satellite. Our school also offered Japanese this way. Back then, it cost $5500 per student that enrolled in these programs, but prices have probably gone down. There were only a couple of students in the class, and we took the class in a little room in the library. Our librarian made sure that we showed up, but our primary teacher was the satellite teacher that lived a couple hundred miles away. I also took an independent study course in high school, where I would write computer programs at one computer while everybody else in the room was being taught something else by my teacher. In that class, my teacher would check in with me periodically to make sure that I was learning and my work was progressing.

Public schools could make customized education possible for everyone with advances in technology and the internet. There are DVD courses, satellite courses, and internet courses that homeschool students can take. Often that can be a good choice for a parent that has several children that are at several different levels. Children can now even take public school classes in their own homes. Some of these programs have to follow a pace directed by an overseeing teacher of the whole program, but there's no reason that they can't be allowed to advance at a faster pace if they are able.

Currently, 4% of school-aged students are being homeschooled, and that is a growing number. The public schools are in competition with private schools and homeschools for students. While some (like my kids) will always stay in private and/or home schools because of the religious aspect, customized education could potentially raise interest in public schools. The public school could combine individualized instruction in reading, math, and spelling, while teaching classes like history and science as a group. They would still be able to do things like show-and-tell and art classes as a group as well. During individualized instruction, the teacher could oversee the group of students to make sure that they were not goofing off, that they were actually progressing, and answer any questions and troubleshoot technical difficulties.

While I'm not a big fan of public schools and think that there's a lot more problems than just the kids not being able to work at their own pace, using technology to customize a child's education might help a lot to boost the educational level of kids in our country. Imagine if kids that were math whizzes could start taking pre-algebra in grade 5 if they were ready. Or perhaps a child was really good with languages and was able to learn Spanish, German, and Arabic before they got out of high school. All of this could be done with the technology of today, if schools were willing to think outside of the box a little.

End of the Homeschool Year in Sight

About this time of year, my dd starts getting towards the back of her textbooks, and I start to wonder when we'll be done for the year. I put together a lesson plan for the remainder of the school year this week, and it looks like we'll be done with everything (except reading) somewhere around May 21st or so. We won't be finishing the reading textbook... I'll be ending that book at the beginning of June after completing lesson 141. I doubt that I ever got to lesson 141 in any of my public school textbooks when I was in school, so I figure that's good enough. All the other subjects I will be completing the entire book. Something that we NEVER did in public school.

Since my daughter is 5, if we were in Public School, she would be in Kindergarten. I remember a little bit about Kindergarten. I remember some things that happened in Kindergarten. With my daughter this age, I am able to see differences in her life up to this point compared to my life at age 5. I'm pretty happy with how she's turning out so far.

She still likes relatively innocent TV shows like Dora The Explorer and Wonderpets. Considering what some kids her age are watching, I'm pretty happy with that. She has lost a lot of interest in Sesame Street and Calliou. She likes to play games on children's web sites.

I remember counting to 100 with my mom in Kindergarten. My dd can count to 100 as well. She can read a lot of words, and add and subtract some numbers. So I feel that academically she's doing pretty well as well.

There are some things with homeschooling that don't translate very well to the public or private schools. Such as doing schoolwork at the dining room table with your baby brother in the room. Sometimes she gets distracted from her school work and will play with him while she's supposed to be doing something else, or she'll be fiddling with a toy when she's supposed to be listening... but she's 5. That's something I suppose I can live with.

She does get the practice of having to sit quietly in a group setting... although sitting quietly has always been a challenge for her. She likes to talk with her friends, even when she's supposed to be quiet. That's another big difference between her and I. It's hard for me to find friends, but she's always meeting new friends. You could say that it's a downside to homeschooling to not be able to socialize with her friends all day every day, but it's probably a positive. She probably would get in trouble a lot in the regular schools for talking, and would probably listen less in class as well.

I remember when I was in Kindergarten I had a boyfriend. He got held back for hyperactivity, so that was the end of that. My daughter doesn't seem to have any interest for now. While I know the time will come eventually, I think that it's good that she doesn't think of boyfriends now. I think that public school often places a great importance on that, and I'm glad that my dd is away from the pressures to get involved with boys before she is actually genuinely interested.

So the school year only has about three months left and I think it has been a success. Next year there will be more work for her to do, but she'll be able to have a little more independence than she has right now as well. I'm looking forward to the break... but I'm also looking forward to this fall and seeing my daughter learn and grow more.

Fleeing For Your Rights: Homeschooling In America

I know what the Bible says: one day, the whole world will be taken over by the one-world government, ruled by the iron hand of the Antichrist. It will be a very scary time for Christians, who will find themselves without their heads if they get caught.

I've also seen people in other countries that have it bad. Like in countries where being a Christian is likely to get you killed. Where it's illegal to own a Bible. I've even seen the story in Germany where a lady was getting her kids taken away because the government decided to drag out an old law from the days of Hitler making homeschooling illegal.

But what I've seen today, in America, really surprised me. Not because it happened, but because it has happened in America.

A lady has actually had to flee her home in order to prevent her kids from going to public school. Not due to abuse or neglect, but because an over-zealous judge decided that public school is what was best for her children.

It all started earlier this year, when the school district lost some paperwork that Denise Mafi sent in to homeschool her children. Evidently, the school district lost the paperwork, and her children were found to be truant. She has been homeschooling for nine years.

The judge in her case had the audacity to state that "homeschooling fails 100% of the time." I guess that depends on what your idea of success is, considering that Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Albert Einstein all had homeschooling backgrounds. The real motive behind his idea of a failure rate is quite transparent, since it has been proven that homeschooled children, on average, do better academically than their public school peers: the judge wants the children to receive the "social benefits" that come along with a public-school education... gems like indoctrination, groupthing, growing up to believe that your parents are idiots and God is either not real or his name is Allah... that sort of thing. The failure rate that this judge is referring to is a failure to produce the sheeple that the public school system is designed to create.

For Denise Mafi's judge, nothing but a full-fledged public school education is good enough. Not a private school. Not public school at home (she already was doing that)... but having her children taken by force from home every day and sent to a regular old public school. Anybody else in this country would at least have the choice of sending their children to private school.

This story is far from over... she has recently fled her home in order to escape the public school system. I'm sure that we have not heard the last of this case, so please keep her in your prayers.

Me and my husband have talked about what we would do when/if the government ever comes to try to take away our rights. I don't blame her for fleeing. We would go too. We already have discussed where we will go (which I will not disclose here). It is a sad day when this happens in America. Having to flee your home to protect your family is something that you associate with the Jews in Nazi Germany, not homeschoolers in the "land of the free."

No Child Left Behind - Homeschool Style

Yesterday I found out what the meaning of "No Child Left Behind" is to homeschool parents.

A local Christian school had the day off yesterday, and one of the members of our little homeschool group was babysitting 10 of the students that had the day off. We used to go to the church attached to the homeschool, so my daughter and I know all the kids at that school. One of the girls attending the school is my daughter's best friend, so she was really happy that her best friend had the day off.

So yesterday all of us had a park day. 10 kids from the Christian school, my 2 kids, and 4 other kids that normally go to the homeschool group. So we had 16 kids.

We all met at the main house where we normally meet, and all the kids either walked, rode in a stroller, rode in the van, or rode bicycles to the nearby park. We took a picnic lunch and toys. We had quite a bike parade!

For the homeschool parent, No Child Left Behind means making sure that no child gets left behind when you have 16 children walking or biking to the park... and making sure that no child gets left behind when returning home. Or toy.

Any parent that thinks that homeschoolers get no socialization doesn't know what sort of socialization homeschoolers can have. Our park day crowd of kids looked like any group of kids you might find at any day care center in the country... only none of the teachers had to make sure the kids weren't biting, spitting, climbing up the slide, etc. (I worked at a day care center for two years). The kids ranged from 11 months to 8 or 9 years too, so there was probably a wider age range than would be playing at the typical day care center playground.

In a typical week, my daughter attends church 3 times, goes to the library with other kids, sees her soccer friends twice a week, and goes to her homeschool group. Not to mention trips to the grocery store, doctors, or anywhere else we might happen to go. She doesn't seem to lack friends. As an added bonus, she usually gets along with her brother pretty well (unless he's trying to play with the mouse or keyboard while she's trying to play computer games).

Science Experiment: Even A 5 Year Old Can See That Evolution Does Not Make Sense

My daughter and I are going through Bob Jones University Press's Science 2 this year. Today we did a science experiment. We made pudding to demonstrate that evolution is nonsense.

I put the milk in one bowl, and the pudding mix in the other bowl. "How long do you think it will take for the pudding mix and the milk to come together to make pudding? A day? A week? A year? A million years?"

To think that the pudding mix is going to jump over into the bowl of milk is absurd, and my 5 year old was able to figure that out. And pudding only has 2 ingredients, milk and pudding mix. Imagine how hard it would be for a pile of screws and metal to get together and make a watch, or boards and nails to magically get together and build a house. Or could a tornado in a junkyard produce a space shuttle? Even a space shuttle is less complicated than the DNA inside a frog, yet we are to believe that the frog came together by itself, even though nobody would believe that the less-complicated space shuttle could build itself.

My five year old understands it.

Reminds me of a Bible verse. Romans 1:22 "Professing to be wise, they became fools."

On a related note... don't you think if any transitional forms were seen (as in, a reptile growing wings and flying) it would be all over the news? I'm not talking about fossils... if transitional forms still happened, we'd notice. We've had people making scientific observations since the Greeks at least... so it hasn't happened where a scientist could notice in 3000 years.

Osama's Beard!

I was listening to Way of the Master Radio and heard a REALLY interesting tidbit. You know how Osama Bin Laden died his beard black? Well, Islam forbids someone to dye their hair unless they are going on jihad!



Maybe he just wants us to think that he's doing something. I hope so. I don't want to see another attack on the US. But maybe we should be extra vigilant.

My husband has been watching Glenn Beck this week, and I usually don't care for the show, but he's having some really interesting info this week about terrorism and schools. There are 17 school buses that have gone missing. There were also some blueprints and videos of public schools here in America found with the terrorists. Could you imagine how grieved our society would be if the terrorists struck a school? It would just kill our spirits.

And if there was an attack on our schools, what do you think the chances are that schools will let parents pick up their children in a timely fashion? I'm giving the chance about... zilch. This school in Texas kept children hostage at school until 9 PM or so the other day due to lightning, I don't think that children will be going home quickly in the event of a terrorist attack on schools. :(

I'm glad that my daughter is going to school at home.

Curriculum I Am Loving This Year

We started school officially on September 5th (even though dd asked to do school early so we did a couple of lessons the week before). After looking through my new curriculum, I was really excited about trying out Bob Jones University Press's Bible course... but after teaching it for a week, I am sure that it is a curriculum that I am going to love.

It's been really easy to implement this program. The questions are all laid out for you, they have child-friendly paraphrases of the Bible accounts to read if you don't want to read straight out of the Bible, and the worksheets are simple and fun (they do one page a day).

I also really like how BJU Bible 1 ties in other subjects to help extend the learning. We have been learning songs in our Bible class (currently we're doing This Is My Father's World). We also are doing BJU Music K, so she gets to sing a lot. I'm glad she gets to learn all these songs, because a lot of times she'll be in church with us and she doesn't know the hymns, so this will help her.

They have a science connection where we've been doing some fun things as well. During our lesson on God making the sky, we made a cloud in our kitchen. We looked at the difference between salt water and fresh water when we talked about God making dry land and seas. These were easy to do but fun. We also learn a different Bible verse every week.

I am teaching BJU music, reading, history, and science as well, but Bible is my favorite out of all the BJU courses. The rest of them are good too :).

"Free" Public Schools? It May Be Cheaper To Homeschool

I've been noticing a trend for the last couple of years. I never really followed it before I started homeschooling my daughter, but it is truly amazing how much it costs to send children to the supposedly "free" public schools. While I may think that it costs a lot of money to homeschool my daughter (and so does my husband every time I tell him I need to buy a new textbook), it's not always cheap to send your child to public school any more either.

This article from the Houston Chronicle really is interesting to me. A mom in the article spent around $1500 on public school for her three children this year. That's pretty amazing, considering I spent $377.87 to buy books for my daughter this year, and I had to buy books and teacher's manuals for every class! My most expensive costs were a $42 set of CDs for a music class and another $42 on visuals for a Bible class. Of course, she probably didn't shop at Wal-Mart during their annual dirt-cheap school supplies sales, because she spent $75 on school supplies alone. I spent about $15, and that included 10 boxes of crayons, 2 dozen pencils, 2 boxes of markers, paper, folders, and notebooks for my husband that is attending Arizona State University. Office Max also had some great sales that she missed out on... they were selling pencils for $.01 for a week there.

Another lady spent $130 on novels for her child's English class. I never spent that much money on books for my college composition courses at the University of Southern California! What do you want to bet that most of those books won't even get read? $130 will buy a lot of books, especially if you go someplace like Half-Priced books.

Many schools charge for mandatory student ID cards. Another school in the article charged $1 for people forgetting to wear their ID card, or $5 if you lose it. I highly doubt that those things cost $5 to make. I can go to the local teacher's shop and have stuff laminated for a lot cheaper than that. Many schools also charge for parking, different elective classes, technology classes (are those mandatory nowadays), and PE uniforms (whatever happened to wearing shorts and a T-shirt from home to those classes).

It's getting so bad that some schools are hiring collection agencies! Who ever heard of such a thing? And then of course, you have the endless parade of fundraisers at many public schools... candy sales, wrapping paper sales, sales of useless knick-knacks, concession sales, etc.

A friend of mine (who chose to homeschool rather than send her child to public school) would have spent the following on fees had she sent her child to public school:

$150 book fees
$50 gym shoes
$50 (at least) for supplies
$250 for school lunches (they discourage bringing your own)

It's true that she included lunches, and of course I have to feed my daughter lunch every day. But we can always eat leftovers from the night before, and she begs me to make her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which is really cheap to make.

I also spend money on things like annual zoo passes, but then again, if my daughter was in public school I'd have to pay for her field trips as well, if she went on them. When she is older, I'll probably want to buy or rent microscopes and other scientific equipment as well. But the difference between those expenses and the expenses that people incur to send their children to public school, is that I can keep all the books I buy. I will be able to use all the nonconsumables for my son when he is old enough for school, which will save me a ton of money. And when my kids are done with the books, I can sell them.

While it isn't cheap to homeschool, public school isn't cheap any more, either. For those people who are not frugal with their money, it could cost more.

Homeschool, Grade Levels, and Dumbed-Down Education

What grade is your child in?

For most American families, there is an easy answer for this question. Their kids get up every day, get on the bus, and the school tells them what grade they are in. It's something along the lines of Kindergarten, first, second, and so on, all the way up to 12th grade. The children study with other children that are mostly within a year of their own age. They study the same grade level books for all of their classes. In some rare cases, a child might skip a grade, or a school might offer "gifted" classes where they might study a certain subject in a grade ahead of them.

For the homeschooling parent, this is a more involved question. My daughter officially started "Kindergarten" last year at age 4. Throughout that year, I came to the realization that it would not be a good thing to label her a year ahead of her peers, because I don't want to graduate her early, when she's 16 going on 17. I also wanted her in Sunday school classes with kids her own age, and when she gets to the age where she might be interested in entering competitions like the spelling bee or the geography bee, I don't want her arbitrarily assigned grade level to have her disqualified from competing several years before her peers. So for purposes of answering the question "what grade is your child in," she's going into grade K-5 this year.

But there's nothing "K-5" about her classes. Well, her music books say Kindergarten on the outside. But none of her other classes are designed for the Kindergarten child. She is doing first grade Bible, reading, and math classes (I wasn't sure about her reading level until recently, but she's shown me recently that she's reading at a level where I think she can handle the first grade course). Her history and science classes are grade 2, since she did grade 1 history and science last year.

I was thinking about this the other day. It sounds like she's advanced, but she's not a genius or anything. I think that probably half your 4 year old children could have done the work that she did last year. She completed Saxon Math K last year, which was so easy we ended up skipping some lessons. I'm not the only homeschool parent that finds Saxon Math K easy, either. Some of the lessons involve getting out teddy bear counters and playing with them. Towards the last half of the book I ended up skipping lessons very infrequently, and I don't think that I skipped any of the lessons in the last 2 or 3 months of classes last year... but in the first half of the year it was easy.

The reading that we ended up actually doing and completing is a workbook designed for 3-6 year olds. We also worked from the "Now I'm Reading" series, which also is geared towards young children, ages 4-7. She wasn't doing anything beyond her age level, as you can see.

Millions of parents around the country spend a lot of time immersing their children in a home full of learning. They buy alphabet toys for their children, have them practice workbook pages like the ones my daughter did, sit them in front of Sesame Street every day, and send them to preschools where they are taught their shapes, numbers, and colors. And then what happens to them when they turn 5 and go to Kindergarten?

They are taught letters of the alphabet, counting to 20, shapes, parts of the body, how to use the VCR and turn on a computer, and how to identify parts of the computer like the mouse, monitor, and keyboard. They basically start all over again. These are actual objectives from the elementary school district where I live, and I think that they are part of the state standards as well.

Do we wonder why kids get bored in school? Most of the children at Kindercare learn their shapes and colors before they get into the three year old room... then they are taught shapes and colors again when they get to Kindergarten. Most of the three year old children at Kindercare learn their letters... only to be taught it again in Kindergarten. Some parents spend more than $100 a month to have their child be tutored using the Hooked on Phonics program at Kindercare... they often learn how to read a little, and write many of their letters. But what good is it, when they are forced to start all over again once they reach Kindergarten?

I suppose that we have to start somewhere. In addition, teachers only have so much time with each student. But it doesn't do the children that have learned their numbers, letters, colors and shapes any good to have to relearn them all over again. Similarly, schools usually spend several weeks to more than a month at the beginning of each year, every year, reviewing what they learned the previous year. For students that have retained the information, it is mind-numbingly boring. That's how I felt, at least. I love to learn things... but learning the difference between nouns and verbs for several years in a row gets old after a while.

Children used to learn a lot more in school than they do now. There is a test floating around somewhere on the net that students had to take in the 1800s when they graduated from the 8th grade... most high schoolers and even many college students would have difficulty passing it. What did they do differently? Well, for one, they didn't teach about sex, drugs, and alcohol. They probably didn't waste too much time in school assemblies either. But the biggest difference was that those children were taught in a one-room schoolhouse. With all the grades mixed together, it allowed people to learn at their own ability level. I'm sure that Kindergarteners who already knew their shapes and colors didn't have to relearn it. People that remembered the difference between a noun and a verb didn't have to spend several weeks out of their year being taught it all over again.

My church has a Christian school attached to it. It has about 26 students or so. They only go to school 4 days a week. They get every Friday off. I only teach my daughter 4 days a week as well. We take Fridays off. Lots of homeschool families either take Fridays off, or they might only do reading and math on Fridays and skip the other subjects.

Perhaps the answer to our nation's educational woes isn't more money (which so far hasn't helped) but finding some way to allow children to develop at their own pace. We're really just wasting a lot of time for many children otherwise.

More Reasons I Love Homeschool

My dh is starting college this fall at Arizona State University. Friday they had a special welcome student day, with an evening barbecue. We decided to take dd and ds and drop them off at grandma's so we could go. While we drove over there, we noticed the school bus dropping off kids. Since dd is now Kindergarten age, I just had to make a mental note that if dd was in school, we would have had to wait for her to get home from school before we could head out.

Dh starts his new job tomorrow. He has three weeks of paid training, and then he will be working from Tuesday to Saturday. In order to maximize the kid's time with daddy, we're doing school from Tuesday to Saturday as well.

When my ds was born last fall, we took a week off the week before he was born because I was just too tired to teach, and we took the week that he was born off as well. Even though I had hospital appointments twice a week for the last couple of months, we still managed to have school four days a week (we have park days every Friday, and will continue to have park days on Fridays even though we'll be doing school on Saturday). We had school at the park and at the library. Our two weeks off when the baby was born was our fall break. Most of the schools around here have fall break... I don't remember having them when I was a kid, then again we never started in the beginning of August either. We will probably not take fall break this year. We took spring break the week that my parents came to visit.

Of course there are some advantages to regular school. I have to actually do the work of teaching, for one... although I like that job. I don't get a break during the day like schooling parents. But then again, I don't have to spend my evenings checking up on homework like schooling parents either. I will probably assign independent work (it's all homework, right?) and assigned reading when dd is older, but I will still know what she is supposed to be doing. But I like my flexibility and the ability to change things on a whim if I have to.

I was thinking the other day about all the school options available now. Back when I was a kid there was public school, private school (which was a little weird), and a few people homeschooled (but that was really out there). Now we have more acceptance for private and home schooling, charter schools, public school charter schools where students learn at home, public school courses where children spend most of the day at home, and private homeschool coops where children go to private school a couple days a week (where all parents volunteer) and spend the rest of the days homeschooling. Even though not all educational establishments are passing with flying colors, at least we have more choices.

I'm signing up my dd for soccer this fall. Should be an interesting experience for her. Since most of my time right now is spent with family and church members, it will be interesting to spend time with some people who are outside that circle.

Homeschooling: I Guess It's Final Now

Yesterday, me, dh, dd, and baby ds went swimming over at my mil's house. At around 3:30, I heard the school bus dropping off kids. Wow, did school start already?

So today, just for fun, I decided to find out what would my dd be doing if she weren't being homeschooled. To see how the other half lives, I guess. I looked at the map to find out what elementary school she would be attending, and then went to their web site and looked at their calendar.

Kindergarten orientation was last week. Schools started on Wednesday. So our fun day spent swimming and enjoying life would have been impossible.

Since her peers have already registered for school and are already attending, it all seems so final now. I suppose that we could change if we wanted to (not that I do), but we are officially in the realm of being a homeschool family, rather than a family that spends time at home doing school work for fun. This is real now.

I did discover that the school I thought my dd would attend if she were in Public School is not the underperforming one that I thought that we lived in the boundary of. Our school district is actually one that is above standards or whatever terminology NCLB uses to describe a good school. That's good, I suppose. If we ever want to move somewhere else, I guess that's a selling point.

I downloaded the kindergarten curriculum from the site to see what they expected to learn. After a year of homeschooling full time last year, dd has most of it down. Some of it is downright simple, like identifying human body parts like the head, shoulders, knees, and toes... identifying components of a computer like keyboard, monitor, mouse. This one is funny... start and shut down basic technology like computers, tape recorders, VCRs. What child of today that isn't either impoverished or Amish doesn't know how to use that stuff? My daughter has been able to find her favorite TV shows on the Tivo for a year now, lol. Since we're in the big time now, I suppose I should go through this and make sure that she knows everything in it by the end of the year. I can already check off most of it.

Dd will still be on her summer vacation until September 5th. Last year we started on August 22 and finished on May 10th. So we've been on break for a while. But don't think that we've been slacking. Just today, we practiced one-to-one correspondence, music (sang three songs), read several sentences, drew pictures, categorized pictures as to whether they belonged in the sky, land, or water, wrote the numbers from 36 to 40, figured out how many dimes we'd need to pay for things, matched upper and lowercase letters, found hidden pictures, and figured out the beginning sounds for pictures. This is our vacation schedule!

So while we, as a homeschooling family, might be playing at the pool while all of her peers are in school, I shouldn't feel too guilty, because learning gets done even in the summer. And in a few weeks we'll be studying our six subjects a day just like everyone else. But then again, it only takes a few hours a day to do all our work, so you might find us out at the pool anyway.

I love being able to homeschool. Which is a good thing, because I'm not just playing homeschool any more.

All Day Kindergarten

The Arizona Republic reported that nearly every school in Arizona is offering free all-day kindergarten. For the most part, the article seemed quite positive. However, I tend to be against all day kindergarten. I think that it is a bad thing for our state.

For most of the article, the AZ Republic went on and on about how 1/2 day kindergarten did not allow time for children to learn things like reading, etc. How 1/2 day kindergarten was mostly just play time, blah blah blah. But then halfway through the article, I found this little quote:

a recent Rand Corp. study said the nearly 8,000 students enrolled in all-day classes did not score higher in either math or reading when they were in fifth grade compared with students who had not gone to all-day kindergarten.

The education of a child is a long-term process. So if the long term results make no difference, then why do my tax dollars have to pay for it? While it is likely that all day kindergarteners will have better reading skills in first grade, it evens out in the end. So why do we have it? Why do we have to pay for it?

I'm guessing that the hidden agenda behind all of this is that parents don't want to pay for half day day care, when they can pay for before and after school care instead. I worked in a day care, and I know that there is a significant cost difference. Hey, if you can get someone else to pay for your kids day care, it's a great deal, right! It costs taxpayers about $8000 per student to send them to public school, as opposed to $7040 to send them to Kindercare full time for 40 weeks at $176 a week. Never mind that many Kindercares have accredited Kindergartens in them, and include breakfast, lunch, and snacks... let's pay more to send them to public school instead.

Parents still can send their kids to half-day kindergarten... for now. But I'm guessing that that option is likely to go away in the future. The AZ Republic points out all the benefits of all day kindergarten:

• Students get more personal attention from their teacher. And less personal attention with mommy at home.
  
• They can practice writing more. Which I guess is something they can't do at home with mom?
  
• They will develop better social skills. Myth. Children do not need to spend all day out of the home with other children of the same age to develop social skills. How often do you go to work and only work with people of your same age? While it probably helps to get the kids out of the house regularly so they can meet people and make friends, it needn't happen in an all day school setting. 1/2 days work just as well. Besides, after working at Kindercare for 2 years and watching children move from the 2 year old room to the 4 year old room... the children that were shy at 2... are the same children that are shy at age 4. Same goes with the outgoing, popular kids.
  
• Teachers can integrate instruction for all subjects And they can't do that in 1/2 a day? I spent 2 hours or less every day teaching my 4 year old, and I would often integrate her classes. It's just a matter of planning and using curriculum that works well together.
  
• Children can make better use of school resources, such as libraries and art rooms. Nevermind that many schools had to cut art out of the curriculum because of the lack of money. I'm guessing that some of the libraries might not be so hot either.
  

I suppose with all-day kindergarten they will have more time to teach classes like sex ed, read stories like Heather Has Two Mommies, Daddy's Roommate, or King and King. And they will have more time to read the children stories about dinosaurs that begin something like "Billions of years ago, dinosaurs roamed the earth." Evolution fairy tales begin at the preschool level, I'm afraid.

My daughter is 5. And no, she will not be going to all-day kindergarten. I will be sending her 1/2 days to (my last name) Christian Academy, where she will learn Bible, music, math, reading, history and science, all in less than 3 hours a day. Can she learn that much in only 1/2 days? Yes she can! Today my daughter read the writing on her baby brother's shirt, "zoo pals." Something she learned at the lastname Christian Academy last year. And we only have lessons 4 days a week, allowing us to have park day and field trips every Friday. I'm planning one field trip prior to the start of school... I hope to arrange for her and my nephew to visit the fire station prior to a lesson that I will be teaching on firemen.

Baptist Seminary Offers Homemaking Degree... Controversial?

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is going to start offering a degree in homemaking this fall, aimed at pastor's wives. I think that it's a great idea, personally. However, I guess not everyone thinks that it is such a hot idea. One Baptist blogger nearly "shot Diet Coke out of his nose" after hearing about it, and found the degree "quite silly."

I suppose that it all boils down to what we find important. Personally, I find my children to be very important. They are important enough to me that I gave up a job paying more than $60k to stay at home with them. They are important enough to me that rather than sending my daughter off to public school this fall to be a Kindergartener, she will be home at me learning reading, math, history, science, music, and Bible.

How much do we value our kids anyway? If the average day care worker makes $7.50 an hour (when I worked at day care I got paid less, but I know some get paid more), then the price per hour per child is pitiful. In Arizona the child/teacher ratio is 5:1 for infants, 6:1 for toddlers, 8:1 for 2 year olds, 13:1 for 3 year olds, 15:1 for 4 year olds, and 20:1 for 5 year olds. So what does your $7.50 an hour child care worker actually get paid? If you have an infant, your child care worker is getting paid around $1.50 an hour to take care of your child (they get paid $1.50 an hour for the other 4 children in her care as well). But wait... if you have a 5 year old in a class of 20 children... your child care worker is getting paid a pitiful $.38 an hour to watch your child specifically. That's not what you're paying, but that's what ends up getting filtered to your child care worker. No wonder we think that mothers should go out and get a real job! We shell out a whopping $.38 an hour for a child care worker to watch our 5 year olds!

I think a homemaking degree is a good thing. I wouldn't know how to sew if my grandma hadn't taught me. Even though I don't often make my own clothes, it's a good skill to learn. I have to use sewing skills to fix my daughter's doll carrier, for just a recent example. Cooking, nutrition, and just in general, bringing up your kids to learn to love God... they are all important skills.

So I'll keep that $.38 an hour and I'll stay home and watch my own. They are more valuable to me than that.

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Supreme Court Addresses Homeschooling!

I saw this and just had to address it before I headed off to bed. I found this on the HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association) web site:

In Morse v. Frederick, however, Justice Clarence Thomas said, “If parents do not like the rules imposed by those schools, they can seek redress in school boards or legislatures; they can send their children to private schools or home school them; or they can simply move.”

Well, good for you, Clarence Thomas! I'm glad that homeschooling is beginning to be recognized as a viable alternative. Sure, not every home school does a great job, but you find failing public and private schools as well (along with some good ones).

Speaking of home schools vs. public schools, the Islamic students over at Carver Elementary School in San Diego need to take the hint. I guess a substitute teacher was teaching in a class one day and they had a scheduled prayer time for Moslems. The classes were segregated by religion (!) and sex. This is a PUBLIC SCHOOL! Since when do we have Islamic classes at public schools? Islamic students that want to pray on school time: please see Clarence Thomas quote above. If you want to pray on school time, go to private school or get homeschooled.

Maybe I'll comment on that some more later. It seems like lately our country is full of all these wimps and one day the majority of this country will be taken over by AZTLAN and the Moslems... because right now we want to seem to kowtow to both of those groups. We'll just let them have the country and they can duke it out.