Yes, I'm on the box!

"What about their socialization skills?"

"They just won't be able to fit in later."

"How will they know what they want to do later in life?"

"They need to know that not everyone likes them."

"How will they learn to make friends?"

"How will they learn to work with other people?"

"What about sports?"

"If only you teach them, how will they learn to take tests?"

"What do you mean you only use encyclopedias? What about text books? How are they suppose to learn about the real world with only encyclopedias?"

Okay so I could go on further, but I won't. I've personally heard these and more. Many of you share some of the questions you get. For us in the home schooling community the answers are a bit obvious. Many times I wonder why it is I have to be the one to educate people on the realities of home schooling. Is it easy? Sometimes, sometimes not. Is it fun? Sometimes, sometimes not. I don't mind answering these. Don't mind sharing what we use or what we do. I do mind the negative questions, and the questions that weren't even thought about before they were asked. Why can't people pick up a book, look online, join a chat or any other way that we (homeschoolers) if they're really that curious? Or at least think about what comes out of their mouths? I do it all the time. When working on animal reproduction in science I read the encyclopedias to make sure that it would be appropriate for a 6 and 8 year old. I read books for three weeks to find ones that would allow for the girls to learn animal reproduction that was appropriate for their ages and learning levels. Then had to reread it all over again when we actually did the lessons. It's what you do especially if you choose to do classical education like we have. And yet for some reason there are people out there that can't seem to pick up a book to simply learn actual facts for themselves.

Maybe it's because we just found out that once again around Christmas time we will be moving. I don't really know but at the moment the million common sense questions seem to be frying my nerves. Thankfully though I have family who are understanding and don't ask the questions because they've managed to pickup books all on their own. Some like my brother and sister-in-law have chosen to home school themselves. I don't know why this is bothering me so much. Normally I'm one of those that really just doesn't give a flying flip what someone thinks about me. I'm happy and so is my family, so to me that's what counts. The change in my children has been wonderful since we choose to do their education ourselves. It could be that my littlest one is wanting to go back to school again, and I quote her here, "So I can play more instead of all the work." I think most of it is she can't simply hide in the middle of a class anymore. We've been struggling to unlearn pictorial reading that was taught to her in the classroom and learn the phonics that she needs to know. I know that I won't go back to having a little girl come home crying anymore because she's been told to quit asking so many questions and to sit and be quiet. Maybe one day they will go back to public school, maybe they won't. We take it one day at a time, and one year at a time. Nothing is set in stone. What we feel is the best option for our children is how we make our decisions regarding school, food, socialization, and every other facet of their lives. The same as every other parent on the planet. Are we perfect? I certainly hope not! I hope that my children see that we love them and are trying to make the best decisions we can, so that they can learn to do the same.

With us moving I've been trying to find out the laws in the new state that we'll be going to and trying to prepare for that. But in doing so I found a study that HSLDA asked Dr. Brian Ray to do in 2003. Dr. Brian Ray is the president of the National Home Education Research Institute. This study was to see what happens to homeschoolers after "school". Did they continue their education? Did they work? Did they fit in to society like public school children? Like most studies I remind you to take into account that the individuals involved probably started out with a bias as to the hopes of it's outcome. Simply add it to what you already know and draw you're own conclusions. I prefer to look at the actual data found and not the results written by those who do the study. In the hopes of not clouding my own opinions. I do hope that you find it enlightening though.

Okay thank you for listening to my vent. I'll be happy to pass of the soap box now.

Unique problems.

Sometimes it can be difficult with home schooling. I know shocking isn't it. Home schoolers are normal people with unique problems sometimes though. It's been busy here. I got in all the new stuff we'll be hopefully using this year. Set it all up so I can try to keep track of what we're doing. We got 10 days done and golf lessons started. I told the girls that we wouldn't do any bookwork if they didn't want to while they were doing them since it is the summer and they already have more schooling done for the new year than most. (Not like we follow that much anyway, lol). So we got through five days of golf lessons without anyone getting hurt or anything getting broken. Then this week they had Vacation Bible School. And here was where the problem came in. The girls have already started their next years so we have a first grader and a third grader. But because we don't follow a "normal" school year they got put in the kindergarten and second grade groups. Now the oldest one didn't seem to care one way or the other. Our youngest on the other hand had major issues with this. She simply didn't see why no one understood that she wasn't in Kindergarten any longer and was in first grade. I tried explaining to her that the children were put into groups according to the year they had completed. But even that was difficult since when I took them out of school most of the work she did at home was first and second grade work. Finally a friend showed up and asked if our youngest would sit with her. Now I look at it and laugh but Monday was ruff for all of us, lol. Check with your local churches and see what they have going on. Many of them will have programs this summer for you and your children to attend. I hope that your first day is simpler than ours started out.

Another unique situation that I found in all of this was a mother who had some misconceptions familiar to home schoolers. You'll know it, "How will the children learn socialization?" Like we lock them in closets or something? Of coarse this is the same mother who actually said, "How will they learn that people don't like them?" This week she asked me, "Aren't you going to let them have a break?" LOL. I honestly couldn't answer. I simply did that cheese laugh, you know the one when try to make the person think you thought it was a joke. So here's a question for you out there:

How do your children learn socialization? Maybe if we start a list somewhere of ways that all children socialize people can pass it out when they get asked this! I'll even start it.

1. They play with other children of all ages on the playground in our community.
2. They play with children at the pool.
3. They went to Vacation Bible School.
4. They took golf lessons.
5. They went to a friends house.
6. They volunteer at the local Thrift Shop helping hang donated clothes.
7. They are part of the Summer Reading Program at our local library.
8. They attend church.
9. They take dance classes.
10. They talk with people around them on a daily basis.
11. They attend Story Time at the library.
12. They attend a Homeschool PE group.
13. They attend a Homeschool Support Group.
14. They attend different Homeschool Groups.
15. They attend karate.
16. They are in 4H.
17. They are in FHA.
18. They are in FFA.
19. They are taking collage courses for dual credit (high school, and college credits at the same time).
20. They are part of the Civil War reenactments in our area.
21. They are in hourly care when I need to have a doctors appointment.
22. They will be attending Space Camp this year.
23. They are part of an equestrian club.
24. They are on the swim team.
25. They are taking Spanish at the local public school.
26. They are part of the dance team at the local public school.
27. They are taking an art class.
28. They are having a bubble and chalk day with the local kids outside.
29. They are in the local play.
30. They volunteer with Habitat for Humanity.

I'll add more as they come in. If you don't want your comment posted let me know and I'll simply add your tip here.

Opps!

I can't believe it's been an entire month! So sorry I haven't wrote anything here lately. Everything is coming to an ending.....and then restarting again. One school year ends and another begins. Sicily's Kindergarten year is over and she started first grade as of Friday. Kyra's done with second grade and began third grade on Friday also. I've been so busy with putting together the curriculum for them so that they can work at their own paces I've lost a month. Along with that I got a garden plot, so I put that in along with my loving hubby. Only to have a storm knock down two trees into it two days later, lol. So we were getting rid of those right before he had to head off to ANOC (it's a school he needs for his rank in the army, to put it simply). Hubby went off to ANOC the day before mother's day and won't be back till July. We're hoping to go up for his graduation on July 22. My board year is ending so I have all of that going on as well. Of coarse a new one is starting right behind it though, lol. Both the girls are taking golf this summer. They have two weeks off lessons and assessments then the rest of the time will be practice. So we'll be at the golf coarse nearly all summer long. At least I'll be able to get a break when I sleep at night, lol. Oh well, we're having fun at it!

I guess I don't really have a way of helping out thrifty wise this time. Oh I know, instead of using your milk that you drink with for cooking use powdered milk instead. In most cases you can't tell the difference. If you use soy, almond, or another form of substitute milk check into powders for those also. They have them, you may just need to look a little harder, like ordering them online. The cost adds up. My kids prefer the powdered milk on their cereal but I don't like it in pudding, or ice cream. I prefer to use it only in things that will get cooked. I use it in Mac-N-Cheese, or baking and no one ever knows the difference and I save anywhere from $0.50 to over $1.00 per gallon. There's a lot less waste since you can make only what you need and the powder is shelf stable. If you're going to drink it or use it cold make it at least 24 hours in advance so it can chill well in the fridge.

Gardening Home School Style

So today begins our adventure into the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Although most historians believe that they were probably terraced and not actually hanging we'll be doing hanging gardens. This is part of our summer schooling program. We'll be able to get a lot of things in with this one project: reading, math, science, social studies (or History), writing, home economics, art and probably some other things if I think about it a bit more. I love being able to put everything together, it's more realistic. After all when you want to know information about something it usually isn't separate from other things. We don't research about gardens just because, usually it's to benefit our lives in some way (help provide food for our tables, cut costs, etc). So we used some of the money we got from our tax return to get both the girls their own hanging garden. Each will be hanging their own choice of two tomato plants and two cucumbers. Then the tops will be up to them. I'm doing my own garden in the back using the square foot gardening method that my sister-in-law introduced me to. I was lucky enough to see the one she had in Virgina and was fascinated by it. Now I'm actually going to be able to try one myself this year finally. Okay so I know that I'm trying to share the thrifty side of things that we do. We did save some money on the gardens by getting them at our local Sams for $50.00. We are also saving the recipts since our accountant said that we can claim many things on our taxes for education costs. I'm not sure what all we can claim but I'm keeping all the receipts of everything we spend on the girls schooling with a short note on the back of what it was used for. We'll see how much we get back when we file next year. This year we were able to claim a little over $600 on hubby's college expenses. Hopefully later today I'll be able to figure out how to post pictures on here for everyone to see!

Until then.........

The government's words not mine!

So there is a new report out that has the statistics of homeschoolers out and I thought that I would share it with you. Now mind you I'm not really one of those that listens to statistics since they can usually be manpulated in just about any direction if worded just right. And I have better things to do with my time that to try and figure out just exactly what they're saying. But I did find this one interesting merely because of an observation that I made when I went to the bookstore (will remain nameless cause it's not their fault) earlier the same day I seen the report. The report said that they estimate that there are 1.5 million homeschooled students in the States from the data collected. Now mind you I don't think that they included children like my next door neighbor who is homeschooled but uses the public school system to do it. If you look at the information it breaks down the numbers. But I digress (normal for me!) anyway it says that of those polled the number one reason for choosing to homeschool was the concern about the school environment. Now back to the bookstore, earlier I was looking "The Well-Trained Mind" at said bookstore so I could referance something in it and noticed that a number of the "teacher" books available were dealing with disipline issues. Normally I wouldn't notice something such as this really but there were such an overwelming number of them you couldn't help but notice. I think it's funny that it would take a huge panel of people to do a lot of data collecting (and wasting a lot of tax payers dollars to do it) to come up with a three page brief when all they really needed to do was walk into the same bookstore I did to find out the same information. With that number of books there it would seem that homeschoolers are not the only ones who are concerned with the school environment.

Okay so that has nothing to do with savings but I was wanting to share that with someone and hubby started to tune me out and actually fell asleep cause he's so tired! So on to my tip! I was wanting to do some finger painting with the girls and help reinforce letters and their sounds. So we went to check out finger paints and I about had heart failure at the cost of them. So instead we went over to the pudding aisle. We picked up strawberry (pink is favorite in our house with two girls), and chocolate (mommy's favorite) instead. They cost us thirty three cents each since they were a store brand and then mommy had a coupon for them too! We brought them home and did Home Economics (cooking) math, reading all in one with following the recipe. The we got out some Ziploc bags. We put about a cup of pudding into two of them and the rest went into containers in the fridge for snack later. Now we had two easy wipe boards that we could reuse and we didn't have the mess from finger paints. We took them outside and played around in the sunshine and wrote letters and numbers in them. Then of coarse as usually happens we started being silly and drew funny faces and other things too. A bird with a squirrel tail, or a big sister with a duck beak. Then the stories to go with them! Then it was time to go inside and have our snack, we had spent close to two hours playing with our pudding boards and they really needed thrown away.

Hope you find time to sunbath like us!

Our school.

Last October we ended up pulling the kids out of school and deciding to teach them ourselves. Since then we've tried undoing some of the things we had problems with. So far it's going well. The hardest part I think was that one day they were in public school and the next they weren't. I didn't really have time to pick out a curriculum that would work for us. We were worried about meeting the state requirements and making sure that everything was legal. Of coarse it goes without saying that we (mostly my hubby, lol) wondered if I had lost my mind. Surprisingly we found the stress had lowered considerably. NowI think I've found what we're going to use as our curriculum permanently (at least till we've found if it's going to work for us or not). It was passed to me and now I'm passing it on to you. "The Well-Trained Mind" by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer is the book that was recommended as reading to me. In it the classical education or trivium is explained and how they used it. They have a number of other books that can help but it's not needed. In the book they show you how they've done things that work for them. I'm going to be using a lot of their recommendations. As with anything my advice is use what works for you and leave the rest. There is so much information out there that your head can spin. Try something if it sounds like something you like, if it works great, if not be willing to put it aside and move on.

I added some sites that we use at different times with our homeschooling. I use all of them as supplements to what I use. They are all free for me to use. I will continue to add things. The Discovery Streaming may not be free for you in your state. And here soon it may not be for home schools in SC either. They are considering if it is a viable service for schools. I encourage anyone who enjoys using it to write in and let them know how you use it and that you do use it. If you have children in the school systems find out if your child's teacher, or school uses it and write in about that too. With times being what they are budgets are being looked over again for pennies. This is one service that I really think helps in many ways and I hope that it stays around.