This week's Carnival of Homeschooling is up - The Light Edition

Misty is hosting this week's Carnival of Homeschooling at HomeschoolBytes.

She starts the carnival with:

"With just a few great online homeschool ideas, this edition of the Carnival is a 'light' one."

And she then breaks the carnival into the following sections:

The light of gratitude and Thanksgiving
Lightening your homeschool difficulties
The Light of Example

Gratitude

A few of the speakers yesterday at church talked about the importance of gratitude.  As Thanksgiving is just around the corner I’m thinking more about some of the things for which I am grateful.  One of the speakers referenced studies which found that people who have an attitude of gratitude tend to be happier, more successful and live longer. 

One of the things I am grateful for is homeschooling. I am grateful we don’t have a conflict in what we teach our children, for example being thankful for their many, many blessings.  Society in general teaches children to want more.  Public schools especially foster an environment of focusing on material things and trying to keep up with the Jones.  It would be hard for Janine and I to spend a couple hours a day trying to help our children recognize how richly blessed we are and then have them spend eight hours a day with their fellow students where they learn to want more and be dissatisfied with what they have. 

For several months this year our family was in the habit of writing thank-you notes each week.  We would step back and think of those who had touched our lives for the better.  With the craziness of the soccer season we got out of the habit.  Now that soccer is over I’ll get my family going again on writing a few thank-you notes.

There is much in the world we can complain about.  There are many problems.  Sometimes I feel a bit like Don Quixote who was driven mad because his society was so decadent.  We should work to make the world a better place.  However, there is also much good in the world and it helps to remember our many blessings.

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

Please send in a post about homeschooling for the next Carnival of Homeschooling. The Carnival of Homeschooling will be held next week at: Homeschool Bytes.

This will be the 359th 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.

I have a reminder mailing list. If you would like email reminders, please tell me.

A secret to leadership

There is a lot of truth to this:

The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.
 - Gail Sheehy

From my Franklin Covey planner.

Do you think Janine would get me a Dragonfly for Christmas?

This looks pretty cool.  I'd love to have one.  My son would also like to have one.  I wonder if Janine would get us one for Christmas?




For more information check out: This Robotic Dragonfly Will Soon Flit Into Your Nightmares For $99.

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling i s up - the Vote! Edition

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling is up at Sprittibee.

Heather starts the carnival with:

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Welcome to the VOTE! Edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling! If you are new to ‘blog carnivals’, please read the link at the bottom of this post to find out more. This post has many links that take you off-site to other homeschool blogs where you can read their ‘showcased’ article submission. If you would like to submit an article for a future carnival or host the carnival on your site, please see the bottom section to find out how. Each carnival writer has the option to put their compilation to a ‘theme’ if they so choose. Being voting day, I figured it would be good to reflect on the process and the politics of making our voices heard.
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A good thought from Walt Disney

I like this:

The difference between winning and losing is frequently not quitting.
 - Walt Disney

From my Franklin Covey planner.

Free online resources for learning American Sign Language

My second daughter is studying American Sign Language.  She has found these web sites helpful:

Learning Sign Language (ASL)

ASL Sign Language Video Dictionary

Good thoughts about education

Waiting for "Superman" had two good thoughts on Facebook this weekend:

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlear, and relearn.
 - Alvin Toffler

Education isn't what you learn, it's what you do with what you learn.

How Toastmasters has helped me with our homeschool co-op

When Henry and I first met, he was involved with Toastmasters.  For those of you who are not familiar, Toastmasters International is a public speaking club. After we got married, Henry got busy with other things and dropped out of Toastmasters. A few years ago, Henry joined a toastmasters lunch club at his work.  Occasionally, I would visit the meetings and bring the kids. Mostly I visited as an excuse to eat lunch with Henry.

Last year when Henry changed jobs, he helped reactivate a Toastmasters club at his new job.  Because it was a new club and they needed more members, I joined.

I discovered that Toastmasters has a very structured program of speeches and "roles" involved with public speaking and meeting management.  One of those roles is to be the "Toastmaster."  The Toastmaster prepares the agenda, sends out reminders, and recruits people to fill in open roles, such as timekeeper or grammarian.When I was a guest just visiting Toastmasters meetings, I never paid much attention to the mechanism of running a meeting.  As a member of Toastmasters, I've had my opportunity to act as Toastmaster on a few occasions.

This is the tenth year that I have been part of a homeschool co-op.  We meet once a week and provide a variety of classes and activities.  In years past, we often found ourselves improvising activities or classes because we hadn't really planned it all out in advance.  Since I've been a "Toastmaster" that has changed.

Early in the week, I send out an draft agenda for our Friday co-op meeting.  I borrowed the style from our toastmasters agenda that marks out a time and a person responsible for each agenda item.  I've even included a location so that we have planned out ahead of time which classes is in which room at the church.  I look ahead of time at potential conflicts.  For example, if we are having PE in the gym we can't use the gym for art class, or if we use the gym for art class, we need to plan for PE outside.

Here's last week's co-op agenda:

12:30 - 12:45 pm    Small / Medium / Large Opening Exercises in the sanctuary

                            (Opening Song, Pray, Flag, Rules Reminder )

                            Conducting: Jacob
                            Opening Song: Matiah
                            Opening Prayer: Sophia
                            Flag Cermony: Chase



12:45 - 1 pm        Small / Medium / Large:  Sharing Time Group #5

                           Emily, Deborah, Henry, Madison, Peter

Announce next week’s sharing group: Sharing Time Group #6: Kayla, Hannah, Samantha, Ian, Lucy

1:00 - 1:30 pm     Small / Medium / Large: Singing Time in the sanctuary - [Jocelyn]



1:30 - 2:30 pm     Smalls:  Lesson in the Nursery [Sarah] 

                          Medium/Large :  Chess Lesson in Multipurpose Room [Henry]

                          Medium/Large:  Picture Puzzle/Sudoko [Janine] in room with the big table                       
                         
         
2:30 - 3:00 pm   Smalls/Mediums:  PE in the Gym [Cathy]
                        Large: Art Appreciation in the multipurpose room [Tonya] 

3:00 - 3:30 pm    Smalls:  Free play in the nursery [Moms]
                         Medium: Art Appreciation in the multipurpose room [Tonya]

                         Large: PE in the gym [Cathy]


3:30 pm             Clean up

In addition to sending out the email agenda, I print out agendas for the actually meeting.  In the past, we've often not had a hard copy of assignments and had to scramble to look it up on line with someone's iPhone.  Things don't go exactly as planned, but using a more structured agenda has greatly improved our co-op experience. 

Facebook says Birthday Cakes are like Facebook

Facebook put up a picture of a birthday cake yesterday with this caption:

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Birthday cakes are made for people to be together. They give friends a place to gather and celebrate. But too much cake probably isn’t healthy. So birthday cake is a lot like Facebook.
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It is easy to spend (waste?) a lot of time on Facebook.  I try to limit myself to about thirty minutes a day.  Mostly I want to stay in touch with family and close friends.

Hat tip: Tech Crunch

An airplane briefing, Habbit styled

This is fun:

Interesting thought about true knowledge

I like this thought, but I don't know how much I believe it:

True knowledge is not attained by thinking.
It is what you are; it is what you become.
 - Sri Aurobindo

From my Franklin Covey planner.

Book review: Towards Zero by Agahta Christie

I have always enjoyed a story by Agatha Christie. She has earned the reputation as one of the world’s most popular writers.

Towards Zero starts off with a group of lawyers talking about a recent acquittal. A senior lawyer makes the observation that murder is often the result of careful planning and unforeseen events. He calls the time of the actual murder the “Zero Hour.”

With this as the background we read the thoughts of a man who has been planning to kill someone. We have the vaguest of hints as to the coming murder, but we don’t have enough information to know who this man is or who he plans to kill. Then we are introduced to a group of people. We get to know them, their fears, and their follies. Two people die. The police are called in. We’re walked through their thoughts and findings until finally the murderer is uncovered and justice prevails.

Good mysteries are a kind of puzzle. We have pieces which we try to fit together. More and more pieces are revealed through the story. A well done mystery concludes with the author putting in the last piece and the reader is satisfied. Agatha Christie does this in “Toward Zero.”

All in all this is a very pleasant story. I had trouble putting it down. If you like Agatha Christie stories I’m sure you’ll enjoy this Towards Zero.

The latest Charlotte Mason Carnival is up

The latest Charlotte Mason Carnival is up at Our Journey Westward.

Susan Wise Bauer won't be speaking at homeschooling conferences anymore

Janine and I typically attend one homeschooling conference each year.  We don't follow the homeschooling conference world very closely.  Susan Wise Bauer was the top speaker at one of the first conferences we attended.  She gave a wonderful seminar and we still have the cassette tape recordings of her presentation.

Home-schooling pioneer Susan Wise Bauer is well-versed in controversy reveals that Susan has gotten grief and decided to stop speaking at homeschooling conventions.  It is too bad.  I have a lot of respect for Susan.  Her book The Well Trained Mind was one of the first homeschooling books we read. 

If you haven't read her typical days, check out: 1998, 1999,2000, and 2004.

I wish her well in her future endeavors.

Study finds homeschoolers are Happier, Better-Adjusted in College

Isabel Lyman used to blog extensively about homeschooling at The Homeschool Revolution.  She also wrote a book with the same title.  In 2007 she moved on. 

Yesterday she wrote an article about homeschoolers.  Study: Homeschoolers Happier, Better-Adjusted in College starts with:

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The nation’s approximately two million homeschoolers, whom others frequently scrutinize and even stigmatize as socially inept, are better emotionally adjusted in college than their non-homeschooled peers, a new study concludes.

A peer-reviewed study titled “The Impact of Homeschooling on the Adjustment of College Students,” by Cynthia K. Drenovsky, a sociology professor at Shippensburg University, and Isaiah Cohen, compared the self-esteem and depression of conventionally-schooled college students to college students who had a homeschooling background.
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Later the article shares:

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Drenovsky and Cohen concluded homeschoolers “do not exhibit any significant differences in self-esteem, and they experience significantly lower levels of depression than those with no homeschooling.”----------

The study had a small sample size.  It would be interesting to have another study with a larger sample.

What is worse than ignorance?

I like this thought from Dan Galvin's Thought For The Day mailing list:

Being ignorant is not so much a shame,
as being unwilling to learn.

- Benjamin Franklin

You have two weeks to vote for your favorite homeschooling blogs

The 8th Annual Homeschool Blog Awards open up for voting today.

Book review: Out Of The Dark

Warning: There is a spoiler later in this review.

I have been reading science fiction for over thirty years. Aliens invading Earth is a popular theme. Because the stories are for us normally the humans somehow beat the aliens back. H. G. Well’s famous The War of the Worlds has germs being the key to winning the war. George O. Smith’s Pattern for Conquest has the clever humans ending up being the power behind the throne. Through the 1960s it seemed like Christopher Anvil wrote a story every year about some alien race trying to conquer Earth and being thrown back. His story Pandora’s Legions is his most famous.

Warning: Just a reminder that there is a spoiler later in this review, so if you don’t want the spoiler, don’t read the second to last paragraph.

Out Of The Dark starts by setting the stage. Aliens had come to Earth hundreds of years ago. They were shocked by just how violent and ruthless humanity could be to each other. After decades of heated discussion the Galactic Hegemony decides to allow the only space going predatory race to conquer the humans. The Shongairi arrive in our solar system cocky and confident. They have more advance technology and hold the high ground. They launch a surprise attack by throwing high velocity rocks at Earth and kill off hundreds of millions of people. Then their ground troops arrive on the surface and for weeks push humans around. The Shongairi find humans are better fighters and in several locations the humans are able to destroy Shongairi troops, but because the Shongairi have spaceships in orbit and can launch devastating kinetic strikes the humans are slow in retaking their planet.

Up to this point I greatly enjoyed the book. I would have given it four or five stars out of five. David Webber wrote with a great level of detail. The plot made sense. The characters were sympathetic and believable. Then totally out of left field Dracula saves the day. He leads a group of vampires to destroy Shongairi command centers on Earth and then they take the Shongairi space ships. I was in shock and disappointed. I really did enjoy the first two thirds of the book, but felt David Webber was unfair in pulling a rabbit out of the hat to win the war.

If you really like David Webber or stories about aliens trying to conquer Earth then you might enjoy this book. Otherwise skip it and try something like Pandora’s Planet.

The latest Homeschool Showcase is up

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

Thoughts about Noticing the Good

Most of us have a problem of focusing on the bad things our children do.  I don't know if this is ingrained in our nature or the way our society is.  I once heard that the average child hears more than ten negatives for every positive. 

Recently on Facebook Laurie Bluedorn linked to a nice post on Notice The Good.  In this post Rachel Stafford makes the point of the importance of noticing the good things her daughter does.  This is true for all of us. 

Glenn Latham writes extensively on this point in his book The Power of Positive Parenting.  He says that children will continue behavior that gets rewarded, and attention counts as a reward.  So paradoxically when parents ignore good traits and fuss at bad traits the children may continue to do bad things because they are so hungry for attention from their parents.

So make the effort to notice the good things your children are doing today.  They will appreciate the attention.

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

Please send in a post about homeschooling for the next Carnival of Homeschooling. The Carnival of Homeschooling will be held next week at: Sprittibee.

This will be the 358th 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.

I have a reminder mailing list. If you would like email reminders, please tell me.
 

National Novel Writing Month

Each November there is a invitation to write a novel in a month. NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. I think it is a great program.

My young two daughters are going to participate. 

I'll share a story I shared last year:

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The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups.

All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A," forty pounds a "B," and so on. Those being graded on "quality," however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A."

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity.

It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

From Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles, Ted Orland
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If you have any children with an interest in writing fiction you could encourage them to participate i National Novel Writing Month.

Good chart showing the exploding costs of government schools

American schools go on utterly insane hiring spree since 1950. Kids shrug, continue to do poorly on tests has a good chart showing the how we have doubled the amount of money per pupil we spend on children while getting no increase in subject mastery. 

The caption explains:

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A new study from the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice finds that America’s public schools saw a 96 percent increase in students but increased administrators and other non-teaching staff a staggering 702 percent since 1950. Teaching staff, in comparison, increased 252 percent, Reason reports.

If non-teaching personnel had grown at the same rate as student population, American public schools would have an additional $24.3 billion annually. Scafidi’s report concluded that $24.3 billion is equivalent to an annual $7,500 raise per teacher nationwide or a $1,700 school voucher for each child in poverty .
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I also enjoyed reading the comments.