Homeschooling In the News

This piece in the Washington Times about the Supreme Court saying that homeschooling is a viable educational option is gratifying.

Especially after Amy's disturbing find about eroding parental rights.

Math-U-See

This program has been talked about quite a bit on the message boards I frequent. It's one that has helped out school tremendously. The Decimal Street post I did March 2007, has been getting some action. First of all, Ethan Demme blogged about my blog, as well as posting comments. Then, Jodi commented on the post as well.... I feel so special to be noticed.

Really, I'm just a little lazy. It's so much easier to teach using MUS than any of the 4 programs I tried before. It's also easier to teach with materials that suit the child's needs, the way Decimal Street has done for us. BTW...Ethan said you'd need a lot of blocks to make a Decimal Street number in the thousands, but at that stage of the game, we use number cards first, then we'll use the blocks and I choose numbers that are little (in the trillions). 1,023,131,242 isn't so tough to build with the starter set of blocks and the completer set of blocks and still have blocks left over.

MUS really was the trigger for us. My dd is easily distractable, but would willing do her other school work. However, she would cry and avoid math like the plague. I switched in Oct of her 4th grade year. I found that free evaluation test really helpful. I found that while she could do all the problems, when it came to understanding them (story problems) she couldn't do it. So, I put her back a year to start MUS. Switching mid-year is perfectly acceptable as MUS allows the child to work at their own pace. Dd has gone through 2 grades of MUS in roughly a year and a half and is really understanding what she's doing. It turned our math class around.

How Do I Homeschool with a Toddler?

Toddlers are a force to be reckoned with -- especially, when you're trying to homeschool their bigger siblings.

My solution :

1. A firm "NO" with eye contact
2. Followed by a short (1 minute) time-out if they don't respect the 'no'.
3. If they won't stay in time-out or are showing other flagrant acts of defiance, a small "smack" on the back of their hands (it always breaks my heart to do anything but kiss those sweet pudgy hands, but they have to learn.)

Beyond those discipline items in place --

1. Keen observation, every second of every moment of the day. Since that is physcially IMPOSSIBLE (although as moms we make a valiant attempt)...
2. I keep my toddlers with me at almost all times. I'm so much more likely to see what's going on, if they don't escape from me (which they have a tendency to do).
3. PREPARATION - This includes activites, toys and as many saftey measures as you can think of.
4. *DISTRACTION* - This is the name of the game in the toddler years. I try and anticipate what my toddler is about to do (like pull 25 books off the shelves) and keep them from doing it by giving them something more attractive to do. Toddlers are GREAT to distract, because most distract fairly easily. They also want something just because someone else has it, so me showing them something I have and acting like it's cool to play with, is usually enough to distract them.

Of course the picture is how we all WISH we could school (during their naps), is doesn't always work.

See my Toddler page for ideas on handling a toddler during school time. It mostly consists of they hows & whys of keeping your toddler with you while you school the other(s).

There are also 50 activities to do with your toddler while you school.

Thomas Edison

This family took a field trip and discovered quite a bit of information!! I do have to wonder how much of what they were told is arbitrary truth - sometimes one version of an event can be different from another -- and both are right.

I found it fascinating!

4th of July in pictures

Here's a kewl link for patriots - http://sagebrushpatriot.com/america.htm

4th of July

Our 4th of July party is coming together.
This website helped get my juices flowing.

#1 on my "smart idea" list : We've invited friends who don't care how the house looks.

The house actually looks fairly decent, but I'd feel obligated to make it look great if we had a different crowd of people coming. Dave did TONS of yardwork last night. I think he was out there past dark! It needed done soooo badly. I'm just no help at all this summer. He said he only got about 20% of it done. I'm so thrilled for what he got accomplished, though.

We've got flags out everywhere. The dollar store was sold out when I checked, but Wal-mart had a good price on them (2/$1.86) for the hand-held ones.

A few activities for the kids planned (3-legged race, water balloons, sidewalk chalk, bubbles, sparklers). On the 3rd, I had them take the black styrofoam trays from the trayed corn on the cob and make fireworks by blowing red, white & blue paint through a straw. We hung them on the bathroom door. There's really no point in over planning -- they'll just want to run through the house screaming and chasing each other all day, anyway.

I thought I'd have them watch the America Rock portion of Schoolhouse Rock. That set of 20 minutes worth of cartoon songs tells the story as succinctly and memorably as about anything I can think of..."and the shot heard round the world, was the start of the revolution..."

The food is bought and prepped, including the Rocket Popsicles we made last night with Jello & Whipped Cream. I've come to LOVE Aldi's supermarket.

If we can stay awake that long, we're going to try and take the kids to the fireworks. Believe it or not, we've never made it to watch the fireworks since we've had kids.

It should be a relaxing, easy-going, flag waving, Sousa-playing day...of course, I'm awake at 4:30am, so I may be a tad-bit tired for 9am Mass on the 4th. It sounds rediculous, but I'll just go upstairs and take a short nap while our friends are here ... ANOTHER advantage to celebrating with good friends.

I pray for America that we may be made worthy to live out the freedoms and responsibilities we've been granted by God.

Pasta Salad

Do you know I can't make a decent pasta salad to save my life? The ones from the box come out just fine. I can make a homemade one "look" like a pretty pasta salad. It sure doesn't taste like one.

I've tried recipe after recipe -- and I can't come up with one that tastes right. My problem is that no matter how much italian dressing I put in, after a few hours it tastes like...oil...tasteless. Even when I put more italian dressing in a second time ... after a few hours it tastes really oily. I don't know how to get the taste to stay.

How hard can this be??

I need to put this one under "cooking failure" (except that I don't have a category for that and I'm hoping not to have tooooo many cooking failures).


There's a trick I'm not privy to...


Does your pasta salad turn out?