Debate on Fox News...Home Schooling

Click the link to view the five minute debate regarding regulating home schoolers to make sure they are teaching *liberal* values debate: http://search2.foxnews.com/search?access=p&getfields=*&output=xml_no_dtd&sort=date%3AD%3AS%3Ad1&ie=UTF-8&client=my_frontend&filter=0&site=video&proxystylesheet=my_frontend&q=home%20schooling

This bothers me on soooo many levels. Even though I vehemently disagree with religion, I've known many strict Conservative Christians whose children are extremely intelligent regardless of curriculum being used. Their children have gone off to college or are working now and *successful* (whatever the heck that means...which varies from person to person). One very religious woman that I know has a son, 15 years old, that is taking Calculus classes at PJC. They are YEC's but I know for a fact that they are being taught evolution...be it a very one-sided teaching of it though and yes, they are being taught that women are subservient and all that jazz...but, regardless, most are receiving the basics and more.

At issue as well, is the fact that they are leaving out an entire growing segment of home schoolers...secularists, like myself. I went through the Public School system and as far as evolution is concerned, it is not by any way taught in-depth. In my possession now are several high school and middle school texts that I picked up from a book depot in Milton for free...evolution is BARELY touched upon!

I felt like Mercedes was speaking through her rear-end with comments about home schooled children being *isolated* and unable to adapt to society, what a freakin' crock. As though no children in public schools have problems in society, or as if every public schooled child is outgoing and extroverted. Puhleaze! Same goes for home schooled children, many are extroverted and outgoing, some aren't...big deal. I suggest that anyone who thinks home schooled children are somehow unable to adapt come to a home school gathering and watch the children interact with each other. When we go somewhere in which there are children that mine haven't met? They don't stand their shivering in fear of interacting with other children, and they do not lack conversational skills either.

As far as learning exactly what children in public school are learning, well, I disagree with that also and do not feel that anyone should be told what they have to teach their children. Education is not something that only the schools can provide, nor should learning be limited to textbooks...many of which are dull, dry, and boring. Personally we use a lot of *living* books, the internet, television, conversations, etc. to *educate* our children.

Yes, there are probably some parents out there doing their children a disservice BUT, until the public schools clean up their act, proponents of them have no right to point their fingers at home schoolers and tell them what they should be doing/teaching. Many children in public schools are left behind, and coming out of them barely literate. The drop-out rate for Blacks and Mexicans is astounding at 45%-50%. A few months ago Newsweek or one of the major news magazines had an article regarding how college freshman have to be TAUGHT how to think for crying out lout. Perhaps they should be more concerned with that than with meddling in the home schooling community.

I am so thankful that in Florida, we can pretty much decide for ourselves what and how to teach our children without "Big Daddy" watching over us.

"You Cannot Teach A Seed To Grow"

was a verse from the song Ordinary Miracle, that struck me in such a way this morning that I had to stop housework to come and blog real quick.

This is how children (and ALL humans) should and need to be treated, like seeds. There are TONS of various seeds in the world that blossom into a grand and vast array of trees, grasses, flowers, vegetables, fruits, etc. All are seeds but each is unique and different and has its own contribution to make to the earth on which we live. Somewhere along the line, humans have tried to force other humans into being the kind of seed that they want them to be, i.e...a rose instead of a dandelion or a red oak instead of a maple or St. Augustine grass instead of crabgrass. No matter how much you'd like for that dandelion to be a rose, it isn't going to happen, but what will happen is the following: the dandelion will wither and shrivel up because instead of giving it what it needed, it was made to feel bad for NOT being the rose you wanted it to be. Either that or it will become a miserable rose longing for the dandelion it was meant to be.

Seeds need nourishment, protection, water, fertilizer, and freedom to grow...just as children need to be nourished, loved, protected and given freedom to grow. IMHO, the world would be a far nicer and happier place if more people were allowed to be who they are inside, instead of being forced into something that they are not.

Did you know that concern about where public education was headed...was a concern a century ago?

Anne Sullivan (teacher of Helen Keller)"I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less slowly. Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of colored paper, or plant straw trees in flower pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences."

Margaret Mead (Anthropologist)"My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school."

Albert Einstein "One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year...It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail."

Charlotte Mason (19th Century British Educator)"Our aim in education is to give a full life. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking - the strain would be too great - but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest."

"The child must think, get at the reason-why of things for himself, every day of his life, and more each day than the day before. Children and paents both are given to invert this educational process. The child asks Why? and the parent answers, rather proud of this evidence of thought in his child.There is some slight show of speculation even in wondering Why? but it is the slightest and most superficial effort the thinking brain produces. Let the parent ask Why? and the child produce the answer, if he can. After he has turned the matter over in his mind, there is no harm in telling him - and he will remember it - the reason why. Every walk should offer some knotty problem for the children to think out - Why does that leaf float on the water, and this pebble sink? and so on"

Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet and Essayist)"The secret of education is respecting the pupil."

Dividing Polynomials...Hooray!

As a home educating mother, it is crucial that I understand how to do algebra and higher math so that I can help my children if they need it. I haven't had algebra since the ninth grade and that is as far as I went (well, Geometry but I sucked at the time). Anyhow, we've been using Ray's Arithmetic for my son, he wanted to go straight to algebra and so following his lead, we did. We were flying right along until we hit division of polynomials by polynomials. The directions in this classic math program are a bit hard to comprehend at times.

I was troubled because I couldn't "get it"; my son couldn't either. After a few days I gave up, ready to purchase another algebra curriculum; however, I woke up this past Saturday morning with a clear head and thought to myself, "I can do those problems." First I went and reviewed algebra for addition, subtraction, and multiplication...that was all it took. I knew these rules below already but was so intimidated by this type of division that I had a brain fart. I had forgotten that when you get ready to subtract, you MUST change the signs to the opposite. For instance, if my product (the answer to my multiplication portion) has + and/or - before any letter (with or without exponents), I need to change those signs when I go to subtract, i.e if my product was +7a5-6a2x, I need to change it to -7a5+6a2x and then subtract. Also worth noting are the basics: When multiplying a opposite signs, i.e +/- the product is negative, when multiplying two negatives; the product is a positive, when multiplying two positives; the product is positive. The same for rules apply for dividing. I had to also remember to SUBTRACT the exponents when dividing and ADD exponents when multiplying.

When dividing polynomials, you divide the first term in the dividend, by the first term of the divisor. After you achieve your partial quotient, you multiply that by the entire polynomial divisor. Line up letters and exponents that match and subtract. If *zero* hasn't been achieved you then bring down any remainders (I like to bring down all leftover terms from the original dividend so that I keep everything straight) and divide only the first term in the difference of the dividend brought down. You keep going until you reach Zero.

That said, I wanted to show my work for the following problem:

Divide a5-5a4x+10a3x2-10a2x3+5ax4-x5 by a2-2ax+x2



I did like 15 problems after figuring out how to do these and now I am able to help my son. It feels really good to know that although I'm 37, I'm capable of being self-taught on math that I thought I'd never have to remember (formula wise, we technically use algebra all the time, we just don't know the specific terms and formulas). :-)

Mentos and Diet Coke Eruption

Zak had a pretty good eruption when he added Mentos (tm) "The Freshmaker" candies into a 2-liter of Diet Coke. Our fence is about 6ft. high to give you an idea of just how high the Diet Coke shot-up!

Carnival of Homeschooling for the Week of March 4, 2007

This weeks Carnival of Homeschooling will be held at Tammi's Blog be sure to check it out.

Fun with physics

Last week we began using the curriculum from Bite-Size Physics, and have been not only learning but having a great time doing so. Mr. Mueller's first lesson is about the Scientific Method and is presented that in such a way that I can only hope that children are being taught this in the schools because if they were, they'd never forget the five steps: observation, hypothesis, test, collect data and report results. Jim teaches that we do the steps involved in the Scientific Method (the steps, not necessarily a scientific experiment) just in everyday life. For instance (following used by Jim Mueller): You want to write something down and you *observe* that you need a pencil. You then *hypothesize* where one can be located and perhaps a drawer comes to mind. The next step is to *test* your hypothesis which is done by going to the drawer. When you open the drawer to look you are *collecting data* (i.e. whether or not there is indeed a pencil in the drawer). If one is not found, you *report results* to someone that there are not any pencils. However, if one is found then your result is that self evident.

I truly believe that if children understood from early on that not only are they using these steps daily but also using physics everyday (i.e. when riding a bike and determining when to brake, turn, etc.), that they wouldn't be so intimidated by science, KWIM? If children were allowed to experiment the majority of the time, instead of trying to memorize a bunch of facts, science would more than likely become loved, fun and exciting for many people. However, if like me, many of these children are trying to learn from dry texts and always watching the teacher/parent do the experiments...they'll probably have a bad taste in their mouth for science just like myself and many others who have went through the system. Funny, took me into my late 30's to actually find science enjoyable and fun. Thank goodness for home educating or I'd still probably not have found that out. Then again, some children (despite being schooled) LOVE science so much that not even having a monotone teacher for an instructor can deter them from advancing in science and thats great.

Now, onto the main subject...We've had fun with our experiments this past week and Z and B have a firm grasp on the steps involved with the scientific method. Last night they didn't even have to use the mnemonic device for remembering the steps, which Mr. Mueller presents in his materials as: "Orange Hippos take classes regularly."

Our first experiment, The Underwater Presidents, involved seeing how many drops of water a penny could hold on both the heads and tails side. The children observed their coins and droppers and hypothesized how many drops they thought that the penny could hold and wrote that down. Next they tested by dropping water. Z did tried three times on heads and three times on tails and B did four tries for each side. They then collected their data by making a chart showing the coin used, what side was used, and how many drops per side and then averaged. They reported their results to me. The highest Z had was over 20 drops and the same for B...how many can you get? Please feel free to share your findings!















Next we did the Diabolical Diaper Experiment using the Scientific Method (I forgot the camera). Anyway their guesses were spot on for the smaller diaper...both held 2 1/2 cups of water. The brand was Parent's Choice for babies 16-28 pounds. However, the larger diaper by White Cloud held about 5 cups.

Our next project was Balancing the Bird and I'd say that this was the funnest of all the experiments. Using card stock, you draw a variety of bird like shapes with a beak, placing a dot on where the beak will rest on your finger. After that, you start your observation and take note of the weight and shape of your bird, and paper clips. Then, you guess and mark where you think that you need to put your paper clips in order for the bird to balance (via beak) on your finger tip. This is tested by trying and either succeeding or not. You can make a mental or paper note on what worked and what didn't and then report your results via telling, writing or showing your results. As you'll see below we had much success...and our 9yo dd B had fun for over 1 1/2 hours playing with these birds. 12yo Z made his, had success, but was finished upon achievement, lol.

**B had tried four birds previously that didn't work and she credits her success in the picture below to the fact that it worked because she colored and designed her bird...lol




Next week we will be learning about constant and changing variables using makeshift pendulums with various weights, I cant wait. :-)

A Homeschooling Pet Peeve...

It absolutely drives me insane when people within the homeschooling communities bereat anyone who disagrees with their views. I'm seeing this more and more in the homeschooling community which is why I refrain from claiming to be anything but a relaxed homeschooler. You won't find a discussion group on the proper way to *relax homeschool* because there aren't any. No board of relaxed home educators who will argue with you telling you that you are not really *relax homeschooling* because you aren't following some big name in the relaxed homeschooling movement. For the most part, I am to each his own, whatever is working for you is great.

Carnival of Homeschooling

The Carnival of Homeschooling is off to a great start in 2007! This week's Carnival is being held at Dewey's Treehouse so be sure to check it out.

Now They Hate It....

It's official, both of my children no longer enjoy their once a week blended school. They are bored, bored, bored to the point of not wanting to go next year despite seeing their friends. This was supposed to be a hands-on-experience type of school and they aren't receiving any. The teachers tell everyone what to write on their papers and the teachers are the ones doing all the experiments. Recess? No recess for the entire 6 hours of school and their gym class is run by a not so nice woman who likes to hollar. Their favorite teachers at the beginning of the year have now went down the ladder as they aren't as nice and friendly anymore, as our 8yo dd puts it, "Mom, its like they were just nice when we were new and now that we aren't anymore, they aren't as nice."

I told the kids, "Well, at least you get to see your friends." That doesn't matter they say because... "There is no free time and you aren't allowed to talk in class." When talking does happen in class it is usually about the subject matter (which I understand) but the kids are not even given a break for the entire day.

Well, if anything, their blended school experience has definately put a bad taste in their mouths for school-school, as neither can imagine doing that 5 days a week. I told them that in public school you do get a couple of recesses but that didn't matter, they were both like, "Yeah, but only about 40 minutes...big deal."