Reminder: Please 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 next Carnival of Homeschooling will be held at: Dewey's Treehouse.

This will be the 392nd 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.

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling is up - The Amazing Superpowers edition!

Cristina is hosting this week's Carnival of Homeschooling at Home Spun Juggling.

She starts the carnival with:

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Mutant and meta-human. Born with it or developed special skills through some accidental event or sheer force of will. Superheroes have this in common: Superpowers. 

  

I've loved comics and cartoon heroes since I was a kid. I always imagined what it would be like to have superhuman skills. Would I fly? Walk through walls? Turn invisible? Becoming a mom and home educator didn't end these flights of fancy. If anything, superpowers are more appealing to a busy homeschooling parent like me. What superpowers would you have?

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Enjoy!

Anticipation

One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
-Arnold Glasow

I am always excited when one of my daughters says hey we are doing this next week, I'll start preparing now. For example when they go on trips they are often packed days in advance. In contrast Janine and I normally finish packing the night before.

Here is another great quote along the same lines:

The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what we want most for what we want at the moment.
- author unknown

Thoughts about various curriculums, from a student's perspective

Hey this is the eldest child again.  One of the great things about homeschooling is choosing your own curriculum.  You can select the curriculum that works best for you.

Through the years my family has used several different curriculums for English, History, and Spelling.

For English when I first started I would read a chapter of a McGuffy reader and write a paragraph prompted by the questions. We had the Original McGuffey's Eclectic Reading Series. It was old and kind of worn.

Then we did IEW for English. This we actually did as a group at co-op. We would read through a paragraph, highlight the key words, put together a key words outline, and write two drafts. We then would read our paragraphs out loud.

Then I took English at Liahona Academy, a distance learning program. With Liahona I did many different assignments. I watched video clips and listened to music for metaphors and similes. I wrote papers on the heroic cycle, and compared and contrasted essays.

For Spelling I first started with a spelling work book that had word search, crossword, and other activities designed to help memorize the spelling words.

Then we moved to Spelling Power. Spelling Power gave a quick spelling quiz every day and then I practiced only the words I missed.

The first History book I had was this thick old book called History of the World. It read like a fairy tale and was pretty cool.

But for most of school we used the Story of the World series by Susan Wise Bauer. For a couple months we had a long butcher paper timeline on our wall in the hall. I really recommend the text book. It’s engaging and easy to learn from.

Your perspective affects your response

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

If you don't like someone, the way he holds his spoon makes you furious; if you like him, he can turn his plate over into your lap and you won't mind.-Irving Becker

Some of our best posts from October 2007

Janine and I have been blogging about homeschooling for over seven years. If you missed some of our early posts, you have missed some of our best thoughts. Here are some highlights from October 2007:

The cost of education has risen a factor of ten over the last 78 years is a post about how the real price of government schools, adjusted for inflation, has exploded over the last several decades.

Economics in one lesson has some resources.

I wondered if Sputnik the beginning of the end? for public education.

I have found that one of the benefits of homeschooling is children retain their love for learning.


September 2007 was also when we were still new to Foster Care.  Here are some posts about our experiences:  Update on our third foster care child, First Day of School and First Day of School - Part 2.


And September 2007 was when I first listened to The Day The Routers Died...



Even now I find this amazing.

Life Humor 1.N

From the Henry Cate Life Humor collection:

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 Does anyone know why they have locks on the doors at 7-11 if they're open 24 hours?

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What's the difference between the Boy Scouts and [name your org]?.......
The Boy Scouts have adult leadership!

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Three men were in the hospital waiting room while their respective wives to deliver. 

Finally a nurse comes out asking for Mr. J.  "Congratulations, you're the proud father of twins!"  "Isn't that fascinating, I come from Twin Forks." and he runs off to see his family. 

The nurse returns for Mr S.  "Congratulations, you're the proud father of triplets!"  "Isn't that fascinating, I come from the Triple Cities."  and he hurries off. 

Immediately the third father stands up and starts to leave.  The nurse stops him and inquires about where he's going.  "HOME", he says, "to the Thousand Islands!!"

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To meet a project deadline, my programmers worked overtime for several weeks.  On the final evening, one woman said: "Boss, do you have a copy of the latest IRS tax regulations? There's something I want to look up."
  "What's that?" I asked.
  "Use of the office as a home."

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  "Nowadays, when opportunity knocks, you have to unlock both dead bolts, remove the chain, and turn off the burglar alarm..."

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Message sent out:  If anyone is walking (or even sitting) around with a blue Pilot pen with a transparent barrel which doesn't belong to them; I think it is probably mine.  I've lost three.  They seem to have walked away from my office.

The reply:  Reboot your office. They might come back.

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Werner von Braun said, "Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."

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     Bad luck is having your operation by the winner of the local grammar school's doctor-for-a-day contest.

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 Practicing medicine in the Bronx has its complications, but the following is something even we don't have to put up with:

 DHAKA (Bangladesh):  At least 50 patients ran screaming from their beds after five cobras reared their heads in a packed ward on the third floor of Dacca Medical College Hospital, officials said yesterday.
 Hospital employees killed the poisonous snakes after Tuesday's fright, but snake charmers were summoned today in case more serpents were lurking in the hospital.

--
         Craig Werner (MD/PhD '91)

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 Oxymorons:
Jumbo Shrimp
pretty ugly
good grief
friendly competitor
committed schedule
marketing strategy

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Daffy-nitions:

Fascinate:    Ma had nine buttons on her nightgown, but she could only fascinate.
Pasteurize:   The water's only up to my neck, but it's pasteurize.
Gruesome:  My dad stopped shaving and gruesome whiskers.

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A reason to homeschool your boys - because public schools want them to act like girls

Jessica Lehey has a nice article at The Atlantic on Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School.  She summarizes some of the problems with how public schools treat boys with:

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Something is rotten in the state of boys' education, and I can't help but suspect that the pattern I have seen in my classroom may have something to do with a collective failure to adequately educate boys. The statistics are grim. According to the book Reaching Boys, Teaching Boys: Strategies That Work and Why, boys are kept back in schools at twice the rate of girls. Boys get expelled from preschool nearly five times more often than girls. Boys are diagnosed with learning disorders and attention problems at nearly four times the rate of girls. They do less homework and get a greater proportion of the low grades. Boys are more likely to drop out of school, and make up only 43 percent of college students. Furthermore, boys are nearly three times as likely as girls to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Considering 11 percent of U.S. children--6.4 million in all--have been diagnosed with a ADHD, that's a lot of boys bouncing around U.S. classrooms.
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I am so glad we can homeschool my son and allow him to be a boy.

Higher education may really pay

The whole Higher Education world is starting to undergo some huge changes.  This is fascinating, Udemy reports that Their top 10 instructors together made $5M. 

Wow!

Reminder: Please 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 next Carnival of Homeschooling will be held at: Home Spun Juggling.

This will be the 391st 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.

Book review: The Mountain Valley War by Louis L’Amour

The Mountain Valley War is one of Louis L’Amour’s best.

Louis  L’Amour wrote dozens of stories with non-reoccurring characters.  The hero would appear in one book never to be seen again.  On the other side was almost two dozen novels about the Sackett family.  The Sackett books spanned several generations.  In between these Louis L’Amour had a few characters that popped up in various novels and short stories.  Kilkenny was one such.  There were three novels and three short stories about Kilkenny.

For some reason Kilkenny is one of my favorite Louis L’Amour characters.  He had many of the traditional traits: fast with a gun, a good fist fighter, smart, stood up for justice and for most of the stories he rode off into the sunset, alone.

“The Mountain Valley War” is the last Kilkenny novel.  Once again our hero is minding his own business.  He is up in the mountains of Idaho building up a small ranch.  Then a cattle baron starts pushing his weight around.  He wants more land, and he kills for it.  Kilkenny gets involved and rallies to the side of the small settlers.  In addition to all that, trouble has followed him from the story of “The Rider of Lost Creek.”  We have lots of gun battles and some fist fights.  The action just moves from page to page. 

Personally I recommend you start with “Kilkenny” and “The Rider of Lost Creek” before reading “The Mountain Valley War.”  But if you like Louis L'Amour or westerns in general you can jump straight to "The Mountain Valley War."

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling is up

ChristineTheCurious is hosting this week's Carnival of Homeschooling at Our Curious Home.

She has a theme of "Floods and Picnics" and starts with:

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This is the time of year when my kids wish we didn’t school year round (we do take off August and most of December, and random days we are grumpy in February, and you get the idea.)
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Enjoy.

I'm glad we can homeschool in the United States

I was reflecting today at just how glad I am we can homeschool in the United States.  The public schools are so broken.  They will arrest a young children for wearing a politically in-correct shirt or for drawing a picture of a gun.  Hundreds of thousands of students drop out each year.  And many of those who do "graduate" don't know how to read or write.

Recently I've been reading a few articles in the new about a bill in the California legilature.  The bill may have a noble goal of providing equality between the sexes.  But the approach seems so crazy.  AB 1266 will allow students to students into the locker room of the sex they identify with.  So if a guy says he feels like a girl it appears these bill will then allow him to take a shower in the girls' locker room.  One article explains:

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The cultural debate over "transgender rights" in public schools has moved to California, where a legislative committee passed a bill April 17 that would outlaw sex-segregated bathrooms and athletic teams.

Under the bill — which passed the Assembly Education Committee by a vote of 5-2 — a student will be "permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs, activities, and facilities, including athletic teams and competitions," consistent with "his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil's records."

This means that boys who say they identify as girls can use the girls' restrooms and locker rooms, and vice versa. It also means that girls who want to play on boys' teams, and boys who want to play on girls' teams, will be allowed to do so. The key will be their "gender identity" — what sex they identify as — and not their birth certificate.
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Insane.

It is no wonder that homeschooling has exploded over the last decade and many expect it to continue to skyrocket. 

In general the United States is pretty friendly to homeschooling.  For example a recent ruling from the Nebraska Supreme Court says a homeschooling family can set their own school calendar, that they don't have to start in August or September.

It is sad that other countries persecute homeschoolers.

For example the Johansson family in Sweden was getting read to leave the country when officials boarded the plane and took Domenic, a 7-year-old boy, from his parents.  It appears that in part the officials in Sweden took the boy because he was being homeschooled.  The parents haven't seen their son in three years.

And the Roemeike family, from Germany, fled their country because they were not being allowed to homeschool.  I'm said that the Obama Administration has denied the Roemeike's bid to seek asylum in the United States.

There are still many issues and problems with education and homeschooling in the United States, but I am glad we can homeschool here with relatively little hassle.

College 2020

It is clear higher education is changing.  It is not clear exactly how things will shake out.  My expectation is that as more people move to these new massive online classes from a few universities that other universities will go out of business. 

In Seven Years 'til the Revolution? Jane Shaw shares her thoughts.  She starts with:

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In spite of all the alarm over rising costs and excessive borrowing for college, one person is confident that college will be far less expensive in just a few years.

In the vision outlined by Vance H. Fried, there will be little need for federally subsidized loans. Many parents will be able to pay for college for their children out of current income.
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Some of our best posts from September 2007

Janine and I have been blogging about homeschooling for over seven years. If you missed some of our early posts, you have missed some of our best thoughts. Here are some highlights from September 2007:

I posted eight Reasons to Blog.

I shared Some of the benefits of homeschooling.

I challenged parents to teach their children to Keep looking after you find "The right answer."

Janine continued to write about our experience with music and homeschooling:  What about Band? - Part 2, What about Band? - Day Three and Music lessons.

We had a few Thoughts about the Value of Education.

Life Humor 1.M

From the Henry Cate Life Humor collection:

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Tom had this problem of getting up late in the morning and was always late for work. His boss was mad at him and threatened to fire him if he didn't do something about it. So Tom went to his doctor who gave him a pill and told him to take it before he went to bed.

Tom slept well and in fact beat the alarm in the morning. He had a leisurely breakfast and drove cheerfully to work.

 "Boss", he said,

"The pill actually worked !"

"That's all fine" said the boss, " But where were you yesterday ? "

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Did you hear about the midget who was running away from the Prague Police?

He ran up to a house, knocked on the door and asked the woman who opened the door if she would cache a small Czech

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One day a three-legged dog moseyed into Dodge City, Kansas. He was your typical western dog, he had a bandana around his neck and a snarl on his lips.

Anyway, Matt Dillon met the dog in the middle of Main Street amidst all his fans and said, "Three-Legged dog, this heres a peaceful community, we don't want no trouble."

To which the three-legged dog replied, "Matt, I'm not looking for no trouble neither, I'm just lookin' for the man that shot my pa(w)!"

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Q: What do you call a short psychic who escapes from prison?

A: A small medium at large.

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Know why they don't let government workers look out the window in the morning?

So they'll have something to do in the afternoon!

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Seems there was a barber in Chicago by the name of Joe Garibaldi. Joe loved to brag to his customers that he "knows everybody who's anybody." The walls of the shop are resplendent with autographed pictures of celebrities and notables.

One regular customer grows a little weary of hearing all the bragging, and decides to call Joe on it by telling him "I bet you 50 bucks you don't even know Sinatra!"

"Frankie?" sez Joe, "We were childhood buddies. For the price of the airfare, I'll take you to Vegas and prove it".

Being comfortable financially, the customer agrees to add the airfare to the bet, and they fly to Las Vegas and catch Frank's show. After the show, Joe takes the guy back to the dressing rooms, where Sinatra greets him warmly and has them both in for drinks. Back in Chicago, the customer is even more peeved at losing the bet, and determines to find some way to win it back.

One day he asks Joe if he knows Reagan. "Hell," sez Joe, "I got him into pictures." For the price of the airfare, I'll prove it to you." So off they go to D.C., where they join the daily tour of the White House. As they stroll through the East Wing, a door opens and old Ronnie steps out, surrounded by G-men. He spots Joe, pushes his way past the Secret Service guys, and embraces him like old times...

Back in Chicago again, the customer decides to have one last all-out attempt at retribution. "Hey, Joe," he says, "I'll bet you don't know the Pope ... heck, he ain't even Italian this time around!" "You betcha I do," sez Joe, "and for the price of the airfare, etc. etc."

They do indeed jet to the Vatican, and arrive at St. Peter's basilica during one of the large open-air masses the Pope conducts from a balcony. The piazza is packed with pilgrims, rosaries in hand, waiting for services to start. Joe and the customer are sandwiched between some sweet little old Italian senoras.

Joe turns to the customer and says "This is gonna be tough .. I don't think I can get us both into the chambers before Mass starts, but I'll tell you what. You keep an eye on that balcony up there, 'cuz that's where the Pope says Mass from. I'm going inside to meet him, and then I'll be back."

With that, Joe elbows his way off into the crowd. Left alone, the customer soon sees a small figure appear at the balcony and begin the ceremony. Soon, a second figure joins him, and they turn and hug each other warmly.

Pondering all this, the customer speculates that:

(1) he is so far away he can't really make out either of them and
(2) Joe has won so much money from him that he could conceivably stage the whole thing.

With that in mind, he nudges the little old lady next to him, who looks up from her rosary. "Excuse me, senora, but can you tell me, is that REALLY the Pope up there?"

The old woman squints hard in the direction of the balcony, and responds "I'm-a not sure, but the other fella with him is-a Joe Garibaldi!"

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This week's Homeschool Showcase is up

Kris is again hosting the Homeschool Showcase at her blog Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Boy is facing jail for wearing a NRA shirt to public school

This is mind boggling. 

14-year-old at the center of "NRA T-Shirt Controversy" now facing possibility of 1 year in jail starts with:

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Suspended and arrested after refusing to change his NRA shirt. Today, 14-year-old Jared Marcum appeared before a judge and was officially charged with obstructing an officer.

A $500 fine and up to a year in jail, that's the penalty that Jared could face, now that a judge has allowed the prosecution to move forward with it's obstructing an officer charge against him.
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The court documents say the policeman is upset that Jared wouldn't stop talking.  Imagine that a 14-year-old boy in a stressful situation.  Maybe he is nervous.  Doesn't seem like a year in jail is the right response.  I am surprised the judge let this continue.

I am so glad we homeschool.  Our children can wear whatever shirts we allow.  We don't have to worry about the capriciousness of others.


Hat tip: Instapundit

Book review: The Tall Stranger by Louis L’Amour

The Tall Stranger is an average Louis L’Amour, which means it is still pretty good.

Rock, the hero, is a young man who joins a wagon train. He is awkward with words, but not with guns.  He helps the wagon train through some tough times, but they don’t trust him.  Then a smooth talking man shows up and tells the wagon train about a “short cut.”  They follow him.

The glib man wants to use the people in the wagon train to take land away from a cattle baron.  Rock is suspicious from the start, but as he is not elegant with words the people in the wagon train ignore his concerns.  The story moves pretty quickly.

I am always amazed at Louis L’Amour ability to make every page a page turner.  Once started, his stories are hard to put down.

I enjoyed the story and would encourage anyone who had liked other Louis L’Amour stories, or westerns in general, to give “The Tall Stranger" a try.

The latest Homeschool Showcase

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

Too many laws

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

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
      -Charles de Montesquieu,
      philosopher and writer (1689-1755)

The latest Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival is up

The latest Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival is up at Simple Charlotte Mason.

Hobbit Trailer - It is going to be a long six months

It looks like a lot of fun:

Be careful about donating money to "charities"

America's worst charities is a long article about how some "charities" rake in a lot of money but do little good.  One common tactic is to give a lot of the money raised to the solicitors who raised the money, who often have connections with the leaders of the "charities."  And many of these "charities" have names which sound similar to good charities, so you need to be very careful. 

For example the "Kids Wish Network" (which sounds like the good Make-A-Wish organization) took in $127.8 million in the last decade and paid $109.8 million to solicitors.  Then those in the organization took a salary and after other expenses only 2.5% was spent on direct cash aid.

Janine and I never give money in response to a phone call.  If they sound legit we'll ask them to mail us.  Very few have ever followed through.

Be careful about donating money.  There are many bad charities.

The key to failure

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

I don't know the key to success,
but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
          -Bill Cosby