We continue with our eclectic approach this year, selecting curricula for individual subjects.  I very much like what I’ve seen of the Writing Strands series, and wish I’d found it nine years ago.

Best of luck with your school year!

1. Please stop asking homeschoolers  if it’s legal.  If it’s legal – and it is – it’s insulting to imply that we’re criminals.  And if we were criminals, would we admit it?

2. Learn what the words “socialize” and “socialization” mean, and use the one you really intend instead of mixing them up the way you do now.  Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun.  Socialization means having acquired the necessary skills to do so successfully.  If you’re talking to me and my kids, that means we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other humans on the planet, and you can safely assume we’ve got a decent grasp of both concepts.  Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer practice to ask her if, as a homeschooler, she ever gets to socialize.

3. Don’t assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.  If that homeschooler you “know” is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a “reality” show, that goes double.

4. Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling.  You’re probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you’ve ever heard.  We all hate you, so go away.

5. We don’t look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they’re in public school.  Please stop drilling our kids like potential oil fields to see if we’re doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.

6. Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious.

7. Stop assuming that if we’re religious, we’re homeschooling for religious reasons.

8. We didn’t go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes with homeschooling just to annoy you.  Really.  This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family.  Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either a personal affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions.

9. Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials.  I didn’t complete a course in catering to successfully prepare dinner for my family; I don’t need a degree in teaching to educate my children.  If spending at least twelve years in the kind of chew-it-up-and-spit-it-out educational facility we call public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can’t teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there’s a reason I’m so reluctant to send my child to school.

10. If my kid’s only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he’d learn in school, please understand that you’re calling me an idiot.  Don’t act shocked if I decide to respond in kind.

11. Stop assuming that because the word “home” is right there in “homeschool,” we never leave the house.  We’re the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it’s crowded and icky.

12. Stop assuming that because the word “school” is right there in “homeschool,” we must sit around at a desk for six or eight hours every day, just like your kid does.  Even if we’re into the “school” side of education – and many of us prefer a more “organic” approach – we can burn through a lot of material more efficiently, because we don’t have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator.

13. Stop asking, “But what about the Prom?”  What about it?  Having my kids skip one over-hyped, over-priced social event does not break my heart.  Go be shallow somewhere else.

14. Don’t ask my kid if she wouldn’t rather go to school unless you don’t mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn’t rather stay home and get some sleep now and then.

15. Stop saying, “Oh, I could never homeschool!”  Even if you think it’s some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you’re horrified.  One of these days, I won’t bother disagreeing with you any more.

16. If you can remember anything from high school chemistry or calculus class, you’re allowed to ask how we’ll teach these subjects to our kids.  If you can’t, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn’t possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one.

17. Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child’s teacher as well as her parent.  I don’t see much difference between bossing my kid around academically and bossing her around the way I do about everything else.

18. Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentative, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he’s homeschooled.  All the kids who go to school can be as annoying as they want to without being branded as representative of anything but childhood, and homeschoolers should be granted the same forbearance.

19. Quit assuming that my kid must be some kind of prodigy because she’s homeschooled.

20. Quit assuming that I must be some kind of prodigy or saint because I homeschool my kids.

21. Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won’t get because they don’t go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school.

22. Here’s a thought:  If you can’t say something nice about homeschooling… don’t say anything at all!

One day, though, I was exasperated.  “Child!  You are supposed to be filling up these lines with letters.  You learn to have good penmanship by practicing.  Why do you keep leaving so much space between your letters?”

“But you told me to leave a pinkie’s width between my letters,” he replied as his eyes filled with tears.  He thought he was doing it perfectly, and was devastated to learn he was doing it wrong.

I don’t yell at my kids, so the tears puzzled me.  I tried to simultaneously calm him down and find out how he could possibly think his pinkie was two inches wide.

Ah, the old pinkie’s length between letters!  I must’ve needed a reminder to show instead of tell.

First is a one-week trip next month to help with some maintenance and repairs on a YWAM base.  Then in mid-winter, they’re planning to spend two weeks in Guatemala.  Passports arrived yesterday, so it looks like they’re really going to do this.  Guatemala is still reeling from Hurricane Agatha; the group will be doing all sorts of work with a couple different agencies:

• Proyecto Fe Int’l – runs a sponsored children’s school in San Pedro, La Laguna
• YWAM Antigua – does missions & disaster relief in Guatemala (as well as in Belize and El Salvador)
• In The Shadow Of His Wings – orphanage which takes in young, severely abused girls, and proves a nurturing living situation
• The Potter’s House – helps feed, shelter, and educate the 10,500 people who live and work in the Guatemala City dump as a means of survival (6,400 of whom are children)

My children will see poverty like they didn’t know existed.

In between school assignments, they’re working to raise money for their trips.  The past week has been spent cleaning stalls for a nearby horse arena, and two people in our church have expressed an interest in hiring them for short projects.  Obviously, they won’t be able to earn the entire amount and we will fund the difference.

I’m incredibly proud of them, that they would give up the little free time they have to earn money – not for toys for themselves, but so they can give of their time to help others.

Kids’ writing will reflect what they’ve read.  If we want our children to become good writers, we need to provide examples and then let them practice.  For a sample that we can encourage our budding authors to emulate, read The Reverse Peeper.  This writing is fabulous!

credit card points

Similar to frequent flyer miles with the airlines industry, many credit cards allow you to accumulate points based on the dollars you charge on your account.  Those points can then be used either for cash back, or for gift cards to a variety of stores.

We discovered that Barnes & Nobel is on the list of places that have gift cards for our credit card reward points.  Charging all purchases on a card that gives us the maximum point benefit, then turning those points into a B&N gift card can help keep our homeschooling costs down.

Last week I visited the bookstore for some of the books my kids will be using this year.  Not wanting to buy everything too far in advance, I just bought the books we’ll need during the first month.  The total was $170, however Barnes & Nobel extends their educator’s discount to homeschoolers, so I got 20% off, thus saving $34.  I also had a gift card from previous credit card purchases, which knocked another $40 off the price.  I saved $74 dollars off that $170 worth of books. 

To make future purchases less expensive, the final amount that I owed was charged on our credit card with the best points reward.  Since I just spent nearly $100, I’ll be able to get another $10 gift card.  In reality, I’ll get a bigger discount, because I will run other purchases through that credit card, too.  If I put my weekly grocery purchases on my credit card (then pay the credit card off so I don’t owe interest), monthly pharmacy purchases, and fuel for the car – all on the card with the best rewards program – I will be able to get a significant credit toward our book purchases.

It keeps adding up.  Next month I’ll order the rest of the books we’ll need through Christmas, charging them to the same credit card.  That will give me more points toward a discount on the next purchase.

Every little bit helps.

Sending a child off to college for the first time is wrenching enough, but a slew of conflicting rules and changing banking and health-care laws are making this year’s move-in season more confusing than ever. And with college costs and student debt at record levels, it is all the more important for students—and their parents—to avoid the new financial traps cropping up on campuses these days, from debit cards to health insurance. …

Even as parents foot the bill for health care, privacy laws restrict doctors, nurses and student health from sharing information without an adult student’s permission. That is where the lawyer comes in.

After a few clients ran into difficulty getting information about adult children who were ill, Sheila Benninger, an attorney in Chapel Hill, N.C., began recommending that clients’ children designate a health-care power of attorney after they turn 18 to identify who can speak for them if they can’t.

She also includes a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, release form that allows patients to determine who can receive information about their medical care and whether information about treatment for substance abuse, mental health or sexually transmitted diseases can be disclosed.

You don’t have to use a lawyer. Generic health-care power-of-attorney forms can be found online. If the school has a HIPAA release online, it’s best to use that more-tailored document.

Parents should keep a copy in an email folder, where it can be easily accessed in an emergency. And students should designate a general power of attorney so someone can pay bills or handle other issues if they go abroad.

“Even if you end up never using these documents,” Ms. Benninger says, they help young people “understand the obligations of adulthood.”

h/t: Dr. Wes

Sample HIPAA Release

Sample Power of Attorney

Old Faithful

We took at long field trip last month in hopes of enriching our U.S. history studies.  For two of our kids we purchased a special book, Passport to Your National Parks.  I hope the other children don’t someday regret declining our offer to get them a book, too.   Every year new stamps (stickers) are printed so that you can spend even more money decorating your passport.  Thi$ is completely optional.  When you go to the visitor’s center of a national park, you can get a “cancellation” for free. 

Entrance into the parks isn’t free, however we learned about the America The Beautiful – National Parks and Federal Recreation Lands Annual Pass.  Given the number of parks we visited, this pass saved us money on our trip (and we can continue to use it for the next eleven months). 

Our family took over 1000 pictures at some incredible locations.  My favorites were:  1) our horseback ride through Garden of the Gods, 2) Golden Spike, and 3) Zion. 

Steam Engine at Golden Spike

We were at the Golden Spike Monument first thing in the morning, so had time to talk with the ranger and explore the displays in the visitor’s center before the steam trains arrived.  Prior to our trip, the golden spike was just a paragraph in boring history books.  Now it is so much more! 

Another stop was the Grand Canyon.  Magnificent!  Now that we’ve seen the north rim, we’d like to return to see the south rim — some of us would like to spend enough time there to hike across (there’s even a place down in the bottom of the canyon where those who make reservations ahead of time can spend the night). 

Many of the places we went had school busses full of kids on end-of-the-year field trips, so I’m not the only one who thinks these were educational locations.  The educational aspect was a bonus; this was a fabulous vacation.   If you’re looking for some great places to visit, here’s a start:

• Lewis and Clark Caverns
• Grand Tetons
• Jackson Hole
• Yellowstone
• Buffalo Bill Historical Center 
• Little Bighorn Battlefield (definitely take the time to attend a ranger talk)
• Mount Rushmore
• Crazy Horse Memorial
• Jewel Caves
• Wind Caves 
• Garden of the Gods
• Pike’s Peak (the road closes at 3:00, so make sure you get there early enough)
• Four Corners (unfortunately fenced off when we visited)
• Great Sand Dunes
• Grand Canyon
• Zion National Park 
• Grand Staircase-Escalante
• Glen Canyon
• Bryce Canyon
• Capitol Reef
• Great Salt Lake
• Golden Spike National Historic Site

The national parks service has educational materials available here, as well as having a “teachers” link in the sidebar of every park, so it’s worth taking a little extra time to explore the resources available before you go.  If you decide to visit any of these locations, I’d love to hear about it!

The decimals book didn’t go so well.  He didn’t understand the material.  End-of-chapter quizzes require 90% to move on, and once my son missed a second question he would sulk about doing the rest of the problems on that page.  It clearly didn’t work for him.  He’s now back to Math-U-See and zipping through the decimals book.

I love being able to customize every child’s education!

If the data shows that kids are safest by learning in an approved classroom, then I want my child in the best driver’s education class around.  That isn’t what the data shows.  When people look at the studies, it’s no wonder that homeschoolers get upset about being forced to pay for expensive traffic safety classes.  Paying extra money for an inferior method doesn’t sound like a good idea.

National Driver Training Institute and Driver Ed In A Box are two programs (there are others) that lead to good results.  A year ago I was ready to place my order.  Unfortunately, my state requires students to pass a course taught by a certified traffic-safety instructor if they want to earn a driver’s license before age 18.

When I discovered that the class that cost us nearly $500 had no direct instruction, I fumed.  Kids watched movies, then read instructional text on a computer screen.  When they felt that they’d mastered a section of material, they were given a written test.  The only thing the instructor did was unlock the classroom and grade tests.

I’m no computer expert, but I know that it’s possible to show movies on a computer screen.  I know that it’s possible to have interactive instructional materials online.  Kids could read the material, then take a test and receive immediate feedback instead of having to wait 2-3 days for someone to grade their papers.  So far, it’s sounding like computerized instruction would be superior to the state-certified-instructor.

Behind-the-wheel time is required, too, though (at least in my state).  After passing a test, the student needs to sign up to go out in a car with the instructor.  The law is pretty clear about what constitutes driving time for a traffic safety class – at least I thought so.  But the instructor felt that fifteen minutes behind the wheel and half an hour as a passenger was enough to qualify as a one-hour drive.  Time and again that’s what happened.  Except for the time that the teacher was 25 minutes late – drives were much shorter that time.

The driver’s ed teacher praised my son’s driving skill.  Friends and relatives let my son drive their cars.  All reported back that he was an excellent driver.  I joked to my friends that I had a chauffeur – my son drove everywhere. 

***

Articles such as Parent-Taught Driver Education Saves Lives and others led me to believe that as parents, my husband and I would be able to provide a better driver-safety course for our children than any generic classroom full of teens.  A year ago I was pretty miffed that the only way to qualify for a driver’s license was to pay a lot of money to a driving school.

Now I’m glad that my son attended “approved” traffic safety classes.  Because my son, the one who everyone says is an excellent driver, who is very cautious and careful, totalled our car.  At highway speeds.  The passengers in our car were okay, but the people in the other vehicle needed emergency surgery and were hospitalized for a week.  That is a very difficult thing to handle.  If I had been the one solely responsible for teaching him to drive, the guilt would be overwhelming.

Even if the law changes in the future and parents who homeschool are allowed to teach their kids’ driver’s ed, my children will all go through a formal class.  We found a different driving school for child number two.  It costs more (nearly $700), but is taught by off-duty police officers.  There is direct classroom instruction.  The policemen add to the class by telling the kids about some of the wrecks they’ve investigated – what went wrong and how the accidents might have been prevented.

In theory, I believe that parents should be permitted to teach their kids how to drive.  This is one subject, however, where the consequences of a single oversight can be deadly.  Give it a lot of careful thought before skipping the formal traffic safety classes.

And now he’s confused.  Combine different types of fraction problems together on the same page and he can’t remember what he’s doing.  It’s driving both of us crazy.  Obviously a change is needed.

With the elementary Math-U-See levels, kids learn a lesson, then have six pages of problems to work (not all in one day! – a lesson usually takes a full week to complete).  Usually I have my kids work pages A and B.  If the problems are all done correctly, they get to skip page C and do the review problems on D and E.  If those review problems are done correctly, then they skip F and just do the test to prove that they really understand the stuff.

• A – lesson practice (Monday)
• B – more lesson practice (Tuesday)
• C – more lesson practice (skip)
• D – review (Wednesday)
• E – more review (Thursday)
• F – more review (skip)
• Test over lesson (Friday)

In addition to not wasting time on busywork when kids obviously understand the material, this gives us the option of going back to pages C and F if I later decide that extra review is needed.

When it became obvious that this child was getting confused, we repeated some lessons.  He worked pages C and F on many of the lessons.  Always, he has done well when we’ve done this, seeming to have mastered what he had previously not understood.

And now he is bewildered yet again.

So we are ditching the remainder of epsilon for this child.  For the past two weeks, he’s been using Life of Fred and loving it.  The seven-year-old has been evesdropping, and he’s learning fractions, too, and enjoying it.  After dinner, they’ll sit on the couch together and ask if we could do another chapter of math!

I want my kids to have a better education than if they were in school.  Sometimes that’s expensive.  Last year we purchased a microscope and dissection kit for biology.  This year we purchased both chemistry supply kits that are recommended with our science curriculum.  Chemistry is fun!  Nobody wants to just read a chem textbook; they want to do the experiments.

Good thermometers, three sizes of test tubes, beakers, graduated cylinders, safety goggles, an alcohol burner (should work just as well as the bunsen burners that I remember from chem), chemicals, filter paper, watch glass…

The scale here is the quality you’d find in any grocery store.  I have one that’s higher quality in my craft room (used for weighing lye when soapmaking).  I’ll let the kids use it for their chemistry experiments.  (For the budget-minded, high quality scales can sometimes be found at pawn shops, and almost always at sherriff’s auctions.)

In one of the chemistry experiments this week, my son explored the distinction between mass and volume.

Surprise!  Equal volumes of water and syrup have different masses!

It’s so fun to see my kids learning.

I’ve always given a hard time to my friends who are constantly on the go.  Many invitations have been declined with the excuse, “We’re homeschoolers, not carschoolers.”

Sometimes, however, life intervenes.  Last week I had multiple appointments scheduled in one day.  When I have only one appointment, the older kids can babysit the younger ones while I slip away for a short time.  When I know that I’ll be gone for six hours, that’s a bit much to ask.

It worked much more smoothly than I’d anticipated.  The boys grabbed a stack of their schoolbooks, and I grabbed a couple others that they “forgot.”

We’re using the dvd’s for Latin, and I grabbed that, too.  Sometimes a dvd player in the car comes in handy!  I popped the dvd in, and the boys got to watch the lesson while we were driving.  After we arrived at our first appointment, we sat in the waiting room and I helped the boys with the rest of the lesson.  They were then able to complete the written assignment while I went back to see the doctor.  They also got their math done while I was back there.

It’s not often that I only have two kids with me.  We went out to their favorite restaurant (a buffet), then got to wander around a store that they’d never get to see if the older kids were along.  I helped them with a couple more subjects, and we discussed economics and social studies while driving to my final appointment.  I left them in the waiting room with a couple sudoku books and instructions to give up their seats to adults if anyone showed up while I was gone.  They are very good at sudoku, so I knew they’d be okay.  They could sit and do those puzzles for hours.

Turns out that quite a few adults showed up.  Not enough to fill all the seats, but more than I’ve ever seen there before.  Everyone asked my kids what they were doing and my boys got to explain sudoku to an appreciative audience.  I considered having them take schoolbooks in to that appointment, too, but was afraid that the day had been too long for them.  Having a fun activity made it go very smoothly.

***

Today I took one of the boys with me to another appointment.  We ended up discussing liver function, kidney function, medication side effects, different lab tests, and a bunch of other things that wouldn’t normally come up if we’d been home doing our regular routine.  I cherish those one-on-one times.

Ideally I’d like to set a schedule and always have the same routine.  We live in the real world.  Part of the beauty of homeschooling is that we get to do what works for our family.  We get to make adjustments when necessary.  I’ve really appreciated that these past couple days.

Tomorrow it’s back to homeschooling.

Believe it or not, these lungs are the same size!  The only difference is that the lungs on the left have a little air in them; the lungs on the right are deflated.

We shoved a shop-vac hose down the trachea, then turned on the blower.  It’s necessary to firmly hold the hose in place, otherwise the air pressure will dislodge the hose:

Even a small cut in a lung can inhibit breathing.  The air goes out the hole instead of inflating the lungs:

Side-by-side with empty lungs and inflated lungs.  Lungs hold a lot of air!

If you know anyone who raises beef, ask them to save the lungs for you when they butcher.  This is well worth doing for a one-time experiment.

After the inflation experiment is done, give the kids a knife and let them cut into the sample.  Let them feel the lungs and pop the alveoli like they would pop the bubble-wrap that comes in packages.

When you’re done, disinfect everything with plenty of bleach.

When we first began homeschooling, the district in which we lived asked a zillion extra questions on their form.  I knew what the law said we had to provide, and only answered those questions.  The district had no problem with that – in fact when I handed in the form, they told me that they were in the process of revising their form and I didn’t need to give anything other than the basics.  The next year their form had been modified.

A few years ago we moved to a new district.  This district’s form looked like our old district’s first form, so I just completed the basic info required by law.  Somebody didn’t like the lack of information.  They took a guess and mailed me a copy after they’d amended my letter of intent.   As you can see, I had crossed out “birthdate” and written “age.”  I also wrote N/A for grade and school (my kids’ names have been blacked out, but you get the idea).  The district people crossed out my “N/A” and took a guess:

In subsequent years I used HSLDA’s form, hoping that the fact that it came from an attorney would get the district to leave me alone.  It worked.

This year there has been a staff change.  When I handed in my letter of intent, the receptionist said, “Oh, this won’t work.  You need to use our form.”  I was genuinely puzzled.

Me:  I’ve used this form for the past few years without any problem.
Her: We need your children’s grades level and school, and you haven’t included it here.
Me:  My children don’t attend school.  The reason I use this form is that your form asks for information that the law does not require me to provide.
Her: We need it so we know which school to send this information to.
Me:  Please don’t do that.  You’ll notice at the top that I added a sentence specifically stating that you are not to release this information to anyone including individual schools.
Her: The schools need to know who homeschoolers are so that they can sign up for art and music classes.
Me:  You are not authorized to release my information to anyone; that includes schools. (smiling – still trying to be polite)
Her: You’ll have to use our form.
Me:  Okay.  Not a problem (said with a smile). Please date the form I gave you and make a note that you refused to accept it.  I’ll send it to my attorney and have him contact the superintendent.
Her:  (sigh)  I suppose this will work.

It would be so easy to put the Request for Ancillary Services form on the back of the Letter of Intent.  People who wanted those services could complete the form and a copy of that could be passed along to the appropriate school.

I wasn’t trying to be difficult.  It’s just that after I filed the above-pictured form, we had a peddler show up on our doorstep trying to sell us curriculum.  This person knew my name and my children’s names and ages.  When pressed, she said that she’d gotten a list of  of homeschoolers from the school.  All the homeschool mailing lists we were on at that time still had our old address, and none of them had information about our kids’.  It’s entirely plausible that the school gave out information (nobody else had that information).  Not exactly legal, so I understand the district denying that it occurred.

Lessons:

• Know the law
• Be polite (you catch more flies with honey)
• The mention of HSLDA can help even if you don’t contact them

I liked the first district.  All they did was alphabetize all the forms in a big 3-ring binder.  If there were any truancy complaints, they checked the binder and dismissed any complaint if the family had filed a letter of intent.  We never had a bit of trouble.  Contrast that with our current district.  Every homeschooler is entered into the district’s database.  We get mailings encouraging us to enroll in online academy.  We get envelopes full of papers about a variety of services the district provides.  We get mailings reminding us to complete our letter of intent for the following year.  I’ll bet the district could save a bundle on paper, envelopes, ink, and postage if they’d focus on the students who are enrolled!