Reminder - send in a post for the next Carnival of Homeschooling

Please remember to send in a post about homeschooling for the next Carnival of Homeschooling.

Mama Squirrel will be hosting the carnival at Dewey's Treehouse.

This will be the 304th edition.

Go here for the instructions on sending in a submission.

As always, entries to the Carnival of Homeschooling are due Monday evening at 6:00 PM Pacific Standard Time.

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up - The Great Smoky Mountains edition

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling is being held at SmallWorld.

Sarah starts the carnival with:

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Welcome to the Carnival of Homeschooling #303! I always enjoy hosting the carnival. I get to "meet" a bunch of new bloggers, visit some old favorites, and, more than anything else, see what is going on in the lives of other homeschoolers.


Here at SmallWorld, we've been doing a lot of hiking in our big backyard, also known as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Interspersed with these excellent posts from fellow bloggers are pictures of our most recent outings in the Smokies. The fall colors are just beginning, the weather is perfect, and my oldest is home from college for fall break (and yes, we homeschooled him all the way)!


So grab a cup of coffee, breathe in that good autumn air, and start reading!
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A great thought!

One of my nieces just posted this on Facebook:

You were born an original, don't die a copy.

Oops, I forgot to file our R4

I was a bit tardy this year filing our Private School Affidavit. I filed this morning. Technically, I think we were supposed to file by October 15th.

Last year, we barely filed in time.

Our confirmation number was over 112,000. Last year we came in at nearly 98,000. I'm guessing there were a few last minute or late filers like me.

In my circles, about half of my homeschool friends file the Private School Affidavit and about half use an independent study programs through the public school. In our area, there is a fairly well run program that looks very inviting. However, I like the flexibility that comes with being outside the public school system.

Is moral courage harder than physical courage?

From A.Word.A.Day:

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
-Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

Some recent homeschooling carnivals

The latest Homeschool Showcase is up at Weird, Unsocialized homeschoolers.

The recent Homeschooling on the Cheap is up at 3 Boys and a Dog.

The latest edition of a homeschooling carnival is up at Garden of Learning.

The recent Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival is up at Fisher Academy International Teaching Home.

And the latest Classical Homeschooling Carnival is up at Baby Steps.

Fascinating report on Poverty in the United States

My mom sent me a link to a fascinating report:  Understanding Poverty in the United States: Surprising Facts About America's Poor.

 

Here is the start of the Executive Summary:

 

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Today, the Census Bureau released its annual poverty report, which declared that a record 46.2 million persons, or roughly one in seven Americans, were poor in 2010. The numbers were up sharply from the previous year’s total of 43.6 million. Although the current recession has increased the numbers of the poor, high levels of poverty predate the recession. In most years for the past two decades, the Census Bureau has declared that at least 35 million Americans lived in poverty.

 

However, understanding poverty in America requires looking behind these numbers at the actual living conditions of the individuals the government deems to be poor. For most Americans, the word “poverty” suggests near destitution: an inability to provide nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shelter for one’s family. However, only a small number of the 46 million persons classified as “poor” by the Census Bureau fit that description. While real material hardship certainly does occur, it is limited in scope and severity.

The following are facts about persons defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau as taken from various government reports:

• 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
• 92 percent of poor households have a microwave.
• Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
• Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite TV.
• Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and 70 percent have a VCR.
• Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers.
• More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
• 43 percent have Internet access.
• One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.
• One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo.

For decades, the living conditions of the poor have steadily improved. Consumer items that were luxuries or significant purchases for the middle class a few decades ago have become commonplace in poor households, partially because of the normal downward price trend that follows introduction of a new product.
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I often tell my friends that I would rather live my life today than to be the king of England 500 years ago.  It looks like I would rather be poor in America than the king of England 500 years ago.

Reminder - send in a post for the next Carnival of Homeschooling

Please remember to send in a post about homeschooling for the next Carnival of Homeschooling. Sarah will be hosting the carnival at SmallWorld.

This will be the 303rd edition.

Go here for the instructions on sending in a submission.

As always, entries to the Carnival of Homeschooling are due Monday evening at 6:00 PM Pacific Standard Time.

Where do we get growth from?

From Dan Galvin's Thought For The Day mailing list:

We find comfort among those who agree with us -- growth among those who don't.
-Frank A. Clark

A nano technology rap song

This is fun:



I think it would be cool if there was a radio station of educational songs.

Hat tip: Instapundit

A good article about the problems with public schools

Andrew Coulson has a long thoughtful article: A Less Perfect Union. 

It starts:

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Student achievement at the end of high school has stagnated or declined, depending on the subject, since we started keeping track around 1970. Over that period, the cost of sending a child through the K-12 public system tripled, even after adjusting for inflation. Public school employee unions, the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, are partly to blame for this, but the attention focused on collective bargaining in particular has been misplaced. The unions' success in driving up costs and protecting even low-performing teachers stems less from their power at the bargaining table than from the monopoly status of their employer. Taxpayers, and most families, have no place else to go.
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I do disagree about families having no place else to go.  A large reason for the dramatic increase in the number of children being homeschooled is because more and more parents and unwilling to allow government schools to hurt their children.

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up - Life, the Universe and Everything

The 302nd Carnival of Homeschooling is up at Raising Real Men.

Melanie starts with:

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The longer we homeschool, the more we realize that homeschooling isn’t merely about spelling, math and history. It’s really about Life, the Universe and Everything, but not quite the way Douglas Adams meant it! It seems like when you start to homeschool, the scales fall from your eyes and you realize all the many, many things you need to teach your children. That’s why a homeschooling blog carnival is so very interesting! Welcome to the October 11th edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling! For your visual pleasure, we are including a series of photographs taken by our son, Matt, at Prairie State Park in Missouri.
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Details behind the Keynes vs. Hayek video

I rarely read the Daily Kos, but a good friend had a link to a long article: Smackdown: Keynes vs. Hayek With Poll.

If you enjoyed the video below, check out the article.  The author goes through the rap song and explains what each lines means. 

A benefit to homeschooling - the flexibility

Last week I asked my youngest daughter what she liked about homeschooling.  She said "Going your own pace."

Today I asked my oldest daughter what she liked about homeschooling.  My oldest daughter is seventeen.  She has never taken a class at a public school.  She is now in her senior year taking a full load of classes while also taking three classes at two of the local community colleges.

She focused on one main benefit to homeschooling: The flexibility.  She likes being able to work through the material in an order of her choosing.  She also likes being able to choose her learning environment.  She likes being able to work in the living room, kitchen or upstairs, depending on her mood.

She tossed in a second benefit to homeschool.  She likes being a little weird.  (I don't know where that came from.  :-)  )

Do you think these children are homeschooled?

A good friend sent me a link to These teenagers are trying to take my job.

The article starts with:

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While attending the 2011 Fall Demo conference in Santa Clara, I was startled by the sight of a young man helping himself to coffee in between interviews with startup founders and venture capitalists in the conference Green Room. It’s my job to drink coffee and do interviews. What’s more, he was way better dressed than me. Feeling threatened, I went to tower over him in my four inch heels.


That young man was 12 year-old Vincent of The Intek, a Seattle-based tech blog created by three teenagers. Their “den mother” was always close behind, taking pictures the way moms tend to do, as the young men toured the conference hall and dug up stories. They had a great sense of who to talk to, and looked people in the eye as they shook hands.
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And here is a video of the boys working:


New Project 3 from Venturebeat on Vimeo.

Think of the learning and growth they were experiencing as they interviewed company founders and asked questions about new products.

I think this is a good reminder that children can do a lot more than society expects.

Sweet - video of rescuing a baby humming bird

My mom found this video:

Another beautiful picture from APOD - NGC 281

J-P Metsävainio (Astro Anarchy) gave me permission to post his beautiful picture of the NGC 281:

For other beautiful astronomy pictures check out Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Review: TED Talk - David Pogue: When it comes to tech, simplicity sells

My second daughter provides this review of David Pogue: When it comes to tech, simplicity sells:

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I recently watched the TED talk by David Pogue: When it comes to tech, simplicity sells. Throughout the talk he would go back to the piano and play funny songs. One of the main points was how making tech more complicated makes the user more frustrated. The importance in designing software is making it simple and intelligent so that it is easier to use. This idea is also applicable to life, you want to organize you’re life to be straightforward and intelligent.
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Here's the talk:



I enjoyed this talk and think it is worth watching.

Review: TED Talk by Sugata Mitra's new experiments in self-teaching

My oldest daughter wrote this review of Sugata Mitra's new experiments in self-teaching:

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Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, is the originator of the Hole in the Wall experiment.

The Hole of the Wall also called MIE, Minimally Invasive Education, is an experiment that tests how children learn in unsupervised environments. What the experiment did was place computers in walls all over Africa and India. Then the experimenters watched as children taught themselves and each other.

Some of the more impressive results included a group of young boys correcting their pronunciation as to be able to be understood by the text to speech functions.

According to Professor Mitra when given free and public access to computers and the Internet a group of children can do everything from teach themselves enough English to use email, to answer examinations questions several years ahead of their age group.
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It is a fun video and worth watching:



(Here is my second daughter's review of the same TED Talk.)

Review of the movie Mao's Last Dancer

Almost twelve months ago I read about Mao's Last Dancer.  This summer we got the DVD and I watched it with my three daughters.  I was blown away, so then the next day I watched it with Janine. 

It is a great story, a true story, of a young man growing up in Communist China who gets a taste of freedom and then risks it all to be free.  It is a powerful message and a good reminder of just how blessed most of us are.  It is also a very professional and well told.

Li Cunxin was only eleven when party officials took him from a little village to a ballot school in Beijing.  For the next seven years he lived ballot.  He never saw his family.  Then Li went to Texas to dance as part of a cultural exchange program.  He was blown away as he realized the Chinese government had lied and as more importantly as he tasted freedom.

Janine read the book and says it is also very well done.

If you like good clean well done movies, then check it out.

Here is a trailer for the movie:



And here is an interview with Li Cunxin:

Online education resources

My mother sent me the information bellow which is from the March 2011 Reader's Digest.

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Did you know the following?

• America’s top professors are putting their courses online.
• The OpenCourseWare movement took off in the US when MIT began uploading classroom material without charge in 2002.
• A Google search for free online education turns up over 320 million results.

 

The following are examples of two free online teachers and the URLs for their classes:

 

Marian C. Diamond, UC Berkeley, General Human Anatomy: The Human Brain and Muscular System at:

http://Academicearth.org/lectures/muscular-system-1

 

Richard Feyman, Cornell University, Law of Gravitation at:

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/index.html

 

 

Below are five of the best collections of free courses:

 

Academic Earth (academicearth.org):

Browse lectures at such schools as Harvard, Stanford, and Yale; post questions and comments; see which lectures get A+ grades from fellow users.

 

The Einstein Knowledge Network (einztein.com):

Access to complete courses, including downloadable syllabuses and document, across more than 35 categories, from 100-plus university providers.

 

Khan Academy (khanacademy.org):

Khan is very wise man lecturing on hundreds of topics. Heavy emphasis on numbers and science. On YouTube, Khan is reaching 300,000 people a month.

 

Open Culture (openculture.com):

A smart guide to free audio books, language lessons, academic podcasts, classes, and intelligent video sites.

 

YouTube EDU (youtube.com/education):

The site’s sprawling academic collection features content from more than 300 college and universities from ten countries in seven languages.

Reminder - send in a post for the next Carnival of Homeschooling

Please remember to send in a post about homeschooling for the next Carnival of Homeschooling. The carnival next week will be hosted at Raising Real Men.

This will be the 302nd edition.

Go here for the instructions on sending in a submission.

As always, entries to the Carnival of Homeschooling are due Monday evening at 6:00 PM Pacific Standard Time.

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up -

The 301st Carnival of Homeschooling is up at Home Grown Mommy.

Jennifer starts the carnival with:

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Welcome! This is the October 4, 2011 edition of carnival of homeschooling. Even here in Florida, we’re finally into cooler weather and enjoying this beautiful autumn season.
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Have you seen Courageous?

My wife and I enjoyed Fireproof. 

I plan to take Janine to see Courageous in the next week or so.

A benefit to homeschooling - going your own pace

I asked my youngest daughter today what she liked about homeschooling.  She said one of the things she really liked it being able to go her own pace.  At eleven-years-old there are times when she wants to do some of the stuff her older sisters, ages fifteen and seventeen, are doing.  But other times she is happy to do more age appropriate activities. 

For example often she would watched the history videos her sisters were studying.  It was exciting for her to learning the same stuff her sister were learning.  Having older sisters have given her opportunity to stretch.

This process has also extended to our five-year-old son.  When my youngest daughter is doing math sometimes he will want to do school so my daughter will give him simple problems to solve.

I am glad my children can move as fast as they are ready and not have to march to the same beat thirty other children are foced to march.