Please remember to 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 here at The Foodie Army Wife.

This will be the 423rd edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling.

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.

The latest Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival is up: Some Unconsidered Aspects of Physical Training

The latest Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival is at Joyous Lessons.

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling is up - the Winter Edition

Monique is hosting this week's Carnival of Homeschooling at Living Life and Learning.

She starts the carnival with:

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This week I’m hosting the Carnival of homeschooling for the 3rd time. Hooray! I love reading all the entries that I receive and I hope you do as well.
 
I love reading what other homeschoolers are doing so that I can gleam new ideas or solve some of my own problems and get new resources. There’s so many great resources out there and it’s all for free, the problem I have is keeping up with so many blogs.
 
Encouragment
 
We’re getting into the dead and cold of winter, it has been such a cold winter for us here we don’t want to let the kids out. It’s that cold. My dog runs out to use the washroom, and runs right back in. This is my energetic Labrador retriever who would rather play outside than come in. Yes, that’s how cold it is.
 
Which also means that we shouldn’t really have any distractions from homeschooling right? Well, we shouldn’t anyways, but I find myself getting into a homeschooling lull after the holidays so we’re having fun playing board games and enjoying some family time together while the books can wait. Do you get those winter blues after the holidays? Well, perhaps you need some encouragement.
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Are you hesitant to tell people you homeschool?

Last week Gracy Olmstead wrote Why It’s So Hard To Come Out of the Homeschool Closet. She makes the point that as homeschoolers we are often reluctant to tell people that we homeschool our children. It can be hard to stand out as the odd one in a crowd. Gracy is building on posts by a few other people who have recently talked about how parents may be slow to tell others that they have started homeschooling. (Out Of The Homeschooling Closet and Owning Up to Being a Home Schooling Parent)

Thirteen years ago when Janine and I started homeschooling we were a bit cautious about telling people. Partly it was because we were still learning the value of homeschooling. After a couple years we become more comfortable about how the education experiment was going and we were more confident about the value of homeschooling. We could see great benefits to our children, and to the other homeschoolers we hung out with.

Today Janine and I are willing to bring up the topic of homeschooling in a conversation when it is appropriate. Whereas ten years ago we might have tried steering the conversation on to other topics. Now that we have become sold on homeschooling and recognize the many great benefits we have no problem admitting that we are homeschoolers.

I think part of the reason why many people fearful to come out of the homeschool closet is because they are still new to homeschooling. They are still learning the value of homeschooling. My guess is there are very few long time homeschoolers who are shy about owning up to being homeschoolers.

If you are hesitant to admit you homeschool, my advice is to take it easy and don’t worry about it. After another year or two you will have much greater confidence that homeschooling is a viable option.

Reminder - Please submit your 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 here at Living Life and Learning.

This will be the 422nd edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling.

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 Robert E. Lee Edition

Alasandra is hosting this week's Carnival of Homeschooling at Alasandra's Homeschool Blog.

Alasandra starts the carnival with:

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Robert E Lee was born on January 19, 1807 in Stratford, Virginia. His father, Colonel Henry Lee, also known as "Light-Horse Harry," had served as a cavalry leader during the Revolutionary War and gone on to become one of the war's heroes, winning praise from General George Washington.
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Enjoy!

Teaching our children some of the really important lessons

Over twenty years ago I started using a Franklin planner. The company merged with Stephen Covey’s company to produce the Franklin-Covey system. Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People had a large impact on the approach suggested for using their planner. One of the key components is to really ponder on your most important values and record them. These values help you recognize the various roles you take on in your life. Then as you do your weekly planning you reflect on your values and roles. This helps you focus on the things which are really important to you and helps you not to be distracted by things which seem urgent but are of little worth.

When I first started using this system and the planner I spent several hours pondering on my values and roles. I dutifully recorded them. Life seems to be hectic and unfortunately I get distracted, so I don’t sit down every week, but on average I manage to sit down a couple times a month to reflect on the most important activities in the upcoming days. I’ve found the Franklin-Covey approach a great help in keeping me focused and making sure I am working on what is truly important to me.

I believe having a system like this can help us be much, much more impactful than if we just kind of float along. In addition to teaching our children how to read, do math, know a little bit about history and so on, one of the really vital things we can teach our children is how to organize their lives so they will not flounder but move purposefully forward.

As our children have gotten older Janine and I have encouraged them to step back and make goals. We’ve asked them to take charge of their lives. We’ve worked to give them the tools and techniques to manage themselves. In one sense this may be one of the most important lessons we teach our children.

Is Higher Education doomed?

Michael Staton claims The Degree Is Doomed.  I enjoyed the post.

It starts with:

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The credential — the degree or certificate — has long been the quintessential value proposition of higher education. Americans have embraced degrees with a fervor generally reserved for bologna or hot dogs. Everyone should have them! Many and often! And their perceived value elsewhere in the world — in Asia in particular — is if anything even higher.

From the evaluator’s standpoint, credentials provide signals that allow one to make quick assumptions about a candidate’s potential contribution to an organization and their ability to flourish on the job. To a prospective student (or parent), the value lies in assuming these signals will be accepted in employment markets and other times of social evaluation. These signals have long been known to be imperfect, but they were often the only game in town. Thus, a degree from a top university has been seen to contain crucial information about a person’s skills, networks, and work habits.

Higher education, however, is in the midst of dramatic, disruptive change. It is, to use the language of innovation theorists and practitioners, being unbundled. (Some more of my thoughts on higher-ed unbundling can be found here.) And with that unbundling, the traditional credential is rapidly losing relevance. The value of paper degrees lies in a common agreement to accept them as a proxy for competence and status, and that agreement is less rock solid than the higher education establishment would like to believe.
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Physics has a concept called momentum.  Things will keep going the way they are going unless there are significant forces.  I can see reasons why the college degree may lose its value, but I don't think it will happen over night, and it maybe that only some degrees lose their value.

The difference between knowledge and wisdom

This is a fun way to show the difference between knowledge and wisdom:

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

Hat tip: Dan Galvin's Thought For The Day mailing list:

Fascinating article about an abrupt firing at AOL

I happened across an article on The Story Behind Why AOL CEO Tim Armstrong Fired An Employee In Front Of 1,000 Coworkers.

It was fascinating.

April 15th isn't that far away

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

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr. 
   -- Will Rogers

Update on homeschooling in Germany

Meanwhile, Back in the Fatherland ... is an update on what is happening with the Wunderlich family in Germany.

I am so glad homeschooling is legal in the United States.

Life Humor 2.I

From the Henry Cate Life Humor collection:
Life Humor 2.I was originally posted 19 Nov 1987

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Lenin is dying, and talking things over with Stalin, his successor.
"The one worry I have", says Lenin, "is this: will the people follow you? What do you think, comrade Stalin?"
"They will", says Stalin, "they surely will."
"I hope so", says Lenin, "but what if they don't follow you?".
"No problem", says Stalin, "then they'll follow you."

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Two Russian border guards, Ivan and Vladimir, on a cold winter morning. Looking across the border, Ivan is smiling to himself, then he notices that Vladimir is also smiling.
Ivan [suspiciously]:  "What were you thinking about?"
Vladimir:  "Same thing you were thinking about, comrade."
Ivan:  "Then it is my duty to arrest you."

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 An elderly man stands in line for hours at a Warsaw meat store (meat is severely rationed).  When the butcher comes out at the end of the  day and announces that there is no meat left, the man flies into a rage.

"What is this?" he shouts.  "I fought against the Nazis, I worked  hard all my life, I've been a loyal citizen, and now you tell me I can't even buy a piece of meat?  This rotten system stinks!"
Suddenly a thuggish man in a black leather coat sidles up and murmurs "Take it easy, comrade.  Remember what would have happened if you had made an outburst like that only a few years ago" -- and he points an imaginary gun to this head and pulls the trigger.

The old man goes home, and his wife says, "So they're out of  meat again?"

"It's worse than that," he replies.  "They're out of bullets."

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What do Winnie the Pooh and John the Baptist have in common?
They have the same middle name.

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#1: Save the whales.
#2: Collect the whole set.

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A candidate and a voter are having a conversation outside the polling place.
Voter:  I would not vote for you if you were St. Peter himself.
Candidate:  If I were St. Peter, you would not live in my district.

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The Pentagon has deployed trained dolphins in the Persian Gulf to detect under water mines. They will be used for purely defensive porpoises

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Proposed Country-Western song titles:

I Wouldn't Take You to a Dog Fight Even If I Thought You Could Win
My John Deere Was Breaking Your Field, While Your Dear John Was Breaking My Heart

Tennis Must Be Your Racket, 'Cause Love Means Nothin' to You

I've Got Red Eyes From Your White Lies and I'm Blue All the Time

I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well

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Gary Hart's big mistake:

He should have had Ted Kennedy drive her home that night.

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"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."
                                -Aldous Huxley

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More IT'S A SMALL TOWN

You know you're in a small town.....

when you turn on your hair dryer and the street lights dim...

Everyone knows whose credit is good, and whose wife isn't.

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Found at the end of a submission by Alexander Falk to the info-mac digest.

IF YOU CAN SEE IT AND IT'S THERE - IT'S REAL
IF YOU CAN SEE IT AND IT ISN'T THERE - IT'S VIRTUAL
IF YOU CAN'T SEE IT AND IT'S THERE - IT'S TRANSPARENT
IF YOU CAN'T SEE IT AND IT ISN'T THERE - IT'S   G O N E

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This travelling guy was once driving outside a small town and right in front of a mad peoples home (madhouse or whatever it's called) his front wheel comes off. Looking into the problem he finds that all four of the wheel's nuts have come off. `This is a fine mess' he thinks loudly `how am I ever going to get out of here'. In frustration he sits down by the side of a road to think things out. All this while there was a mad inmate who watched the whole scene from his window. After a while he calls out to the traveler asking him to approach the window. The man looks at him and decides that the last thing he can handle is a conversation with a lunatic and ignores him but eventually gives in when he persists. When he approaches the window the mad man tells him to take one nut out of each of his other wheels and use it temporarily on wheel that's come off. This way he could get to next town and buy 4 more. The traveler looks at him in disbelief, this had never occurred to him.  Totally blown away by this, he apologizes for his rude behavior previously and ask him why he's in a mad house when he's has so much common sense. To this he gets the reply "I'm mad not STUPID".

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    The meek will inherit the earth--if that's OK with you.

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Here are some funny(?) phrases and constructions that my wife brought home from her class. (She is a high school English teacher.)  These actually appeared in her students' homework and exams.  I thought that they were funny enough to be included in rec.humor.

I loved her so much that I put her on a pedal stool.

When I grow up I want to be a whorse trainer.

She left him because he took her for granite.

In the Middle Ages Europe was swept by the Blue Bonnet plague.

When you have finished the final step, Walla! you're ready to bake your cake.

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A key component to growth

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
  - George Eliot

From my Franklin Covey planner.

A cool tool for seeing our local neighborhood of stars

Stars is a fun way to see where how our close stars are located.

The latest Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival is up

The latest Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival is up at Letters from Nebby.

Reminder - Please submit your 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 here at Alasandra's Homeschool Blog.

This will be the 421st edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling.

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.

Some of our best posts from December 2008

Janine and I have been blogging about homeschooling for almost eight years. If you missed some of our early posts, you have missed some of our best thoughts. Here are some highlights from December 2008:

Paying more for an education than it is worth is about how the costs of higher education make exceed the benefit.

The title says it all: Another reason to homeschool - to teach your children to be honest.

Janine posted a picture of the foster boy we ended up adopting: Update on "Baby Bop"

An approach for dealing with worry

Write down several things you worry about.  Circle those things you can do something about and work on them.  Forget the rest.

From my Franklin Covey planner.

Shakespeare's Who's On First

Debbie left a comment on our post about Abbott & Costello's Who's On First with a link to a hilarious video of Shakespeare's Who's On First:



Enjoy.

One homeschooling families experience in preparing for a State of California University

If you homeschool in California you may find Academically Preparing a Homeschool High School Student for a State of California University informative.

This is a great point to remember

The question should be, is it worth trying to do, not can it be done.
  - Allard Lowenstein

From my Franklin Covey planner.

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling is up - The Model Homes edition

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling is up at Home Spun Juggling.

The carnival starts with:

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Welcome to the Carnival of Homeschooling: The Model Homes edition!

By "model," I mean "miniature reproductions." Last week, my family went to the Holiday Train Show at the NY Botanical Garden. It's become a tradition for us to visit and see what's new. Each year, designer Paul Busse and his team add to the collection of historical buildings and homes in this display. There is always a surprise. Just like our journey as homeschoolers, following the model trains always leads to unexpected discoveries, giggles and wonder. Come along for the ride.
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Enjoy.

Life Humor 2.H

From the Henry Cate Life Humor collection:
Life Humor 2.H was posted 19 Nov 1987

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From the November issue of Road & Track...

From there's-gotta-be-a-better-way file: A man from Kokomo, Indiana drove his car to Indianapolis to pick up a truck he purchased. The problem: two vehicles, ONE driver. So, he drove his car up the road, parked and walked back to the truck. Then, he drove the car a ways past the truck.... The dealership is 63 miles from Kokomo. The story ran in the Indianapolis News.

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"If you took all the economists and laid them head to toe, they would stretch around the world three times and the only thing they would not reach is a conclusion."

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Wanna know how to make a small fortune in stocks?
Start with a large fortune.

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How many investment brokers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: MY GOD!!  IT BURNT OUT!!  SELL ALL MY G.E. STOCK NOW!!!!!
B: Two.  One to take out the bulb and drop it, and the other to try and sell it before it crashes.

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Heard on WITR yesterday: RIT students have organized their annual community involvement volunteer project.  This year's project will be to help clean up Mt. Hope Cemetery.  The project has been titled "The Grateful Dead".

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Person 1:  Do you know how to save a drowning lawyer?
Person 2:  No.
Person 1:  GOOD!

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 A rabbi, a priest, and a lawyer were all caught in a shipwreck. Naturally, there are a lot of sharks circling around.  All of a sudden, one shark darts in and grabs the priest for lunch.  No more priest. The rabbi starts praying frantically, but to no avail, as a shark comes in and eats him, too.  Now the lawyer is really worried, as a shark is coming for him.  But, miracle of miracles, the shark puts him on its back, carries him to shore, and lets him off.  The lawyer, curious, waits till the shark is far enough away not to eat him, and asks, "How come you didn't eat me?"  And the shark replies, "Professional Courtesy!"

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Some of our best posts from November 2008

Janine and I have been blogging about homeschooling for almost eight years. If you missed some of our early posts, you have missed some of our best thoughts. Here are some highlights from November 2008:

A nice thing about homeschooling is about the freedom to make your own schedules.