Okay, so I know it's been a long time since I blogged. I had to, pretty much, take the summer off. Hopefully, now that some things are getting wrapped up in my life, I can get back to a regular schedule of blogging.
[My dad passed away in 2006, and I was executrix for his estate; his estate finally wrapped up in 2009. My step-dad passed away months after my dad. My mom passed away in 2007, and I was executrix for her estate and trustee for her trust. Resolving her estate involved becoming executrix for my step-dad's estate, since she had never done anything formal, and some of "her" belongings were legally in his name. Estate is resolved, but trust is still outstanding; house I had to empty, repair and fix up is currently under contract... We'll see how that goes. After that, there is still three years of paperwork to get ducks in order (which I should have done already but haven't), at which time I distribute to heirs and am finally free, free, free from these beyond normal responsibilities...]
Anyway, am way behind on reading emails, and finally read this one about comments from a college professor critiquing homeschoolers who go on to college. It was good, and I wanted to share it:
This article may be published on web sites and
in publications as long as it's reproduced in
its entirety, including the resource box at the end
of the article. Thanks!
College Professor Critiques Homeschoolers
copyright 2009 by Greg Landry, M.S.
I teach sophomore through senior level college
students - most of them are "pre-professional"
students. They are preparing to go to medical
school, dental school, physical therapy school,
etc.
As a generalization, I've noticed certain
characteristics common in my students who were
homeschooled. Some of these are desirable,
some not.
Desirable characteristics:
1. They are independent learners and do a great
job of taking initiative and being responsible
for learning. They don't have to be "spoon fed"
as many students do. This gives them an advantage
at two specific points in their education;
early in college and in graduate education.
2. They handle classroom social situations
(interactions with their peers and professors)
very well. In general, my homeschooled students
are a pleasure to have in class. They greet me
when the enter the class, initiate conversations
when appropriate, and they don't hesitate to
ask good questions. Most of my students do
none of these.
3. They are serious about their education and
that's very obvious in their attitude, preparedness,
and grades.
Areas where homeschooled students can improve:
1. They come to college less prepared in the
sciences than their schooled counterparts -
sometimes far less prepared. This can be
especially troublesome for pre-professional
students who need to maintain a high grade
point average from the very beginning.
2. They come to college without sufficient
test-taking experience, particularly with
timed tests. Many homeschooled students have a
high level of anxiety when it comes to taking
timed tests.
3. Many homeschooled students have problems
meeting deadlines and have to adjust to that in
college. That adjustment time in their freshman
year can be costly in terms of the way it affects
their grades.
My advice to homeschooling parents:
1. If your child is even possibly college
bound and interested in the sciences, make
sure that they have a solid foundation of
science in the high school years.
2. Begin giving timed tests by 7th or 8th grade.
I'm referring to all tests that students take, not
just national, standardized tests.
I think it is a disservice to not give students
timed tests. They tend to focus better and score
higher on timed tests, and, they are far better
prepared for college and graduate education if
they've taken timed tests throughout the high
school years.
In the earlier years the timed tests should allow
ample time to complete the test as long as the
student is working steadily. The objective is for
them to know it's timed yet not to feel a time
pressure. This helps students to be comfortable
taking timed tests and develops confidence in
their test-taking abilities.
3. Give your students real deadlines to meet in
the high school years. If it's difficult for students
to meet these deadlines because they're
coming from mom or dad, have them take
"outside" classes; online, co-op, or community
college.
_______________________________
Greg Landry is a 14 year veteran homeschool dad
and college professor. He also teaches one and
two semester online science classes, and offers
free 45 minute online seminars..
http://www.HomeschoolScienceAcademy.com
Well, I almost never get to do this, because I'm not very tech-y! But a friend took my son to the creek with her kids and send me photos! So, here they are:
I have no idea what his lovely "discovery" was! I'll have to ask him what he was holding in the photo. A lot of times he comes home with minnows, but not yesterday.
But, on an exciting note, he was looking in our fish tank at home last night and he is the one that discovered BABY FISH swimming around in the tank. He first spotted one, and then I spotted more. We located that baby tank (a little box that floats in the big tank to keep the mama from eating the babies), and started catching the babies. It's hard to count, but we think we have 19 babies. There were a couple that didn't make it, and a couple that mama ate before we could separate her from them, but we are thinking 19 babies is wonderful. Hopefully many of them will survive and grow.
I'd take a photo, but, like I said, I'm not very tech'y. Besides, I don't have a zoom lense, and these babies are hard to see with the naked eye, let alone in a photograph without being enlarged...
I am writing today to tell you about an email you can subscribe to to receive daily free resource information and links. Diane Flynn Keith, Editor of Homefires & Author of Carschooling is also the author of a daily email called ClickSchooling, in which she has reviewed and recommended educational websites that can save you time and money. The reviews are sent in a daily email, Monday through Saturday, that are focused on a specific subject as follows:
Monday = Math
Tuesday = Science
Wednesday = Language Arts
Thursday = Social Sciences
Friday = Virtual Field Trip
Saturday = Electives: Music, Art, & Languages
The sites generally include excellent information delivered in a student-friendly, multi-media format, and often contain free interactive games as well as printable lessons and materials that can be tweaked to your needs and interests whether you are homeschooling or unschooling. Most of the sites are suitable for a wide age range.
She recently sent out a special "Homefires" email update, which you might want to see to learn more.
How would you like to get a copy of the below book for free?
I know I'd love to get a copy!
Did you ever dream of getting a horse for Christmas? You can get a sneak peek of our Fall issue and see Nancy Carter's first horse! Oh, and she's not the only one sharing her childhood pictures. You'll see photos from the 50's through the 80's.
But, you'll need the Fall issue of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine to go on this walk down memory lane.
Plus, do you like to create holiday memories? The brand new TOS holiday E-Book can be yours, too. It's all about the fall and winter holidays - mainly Thanksgiving and Christmas. But it's not even for sale yet. This is your chance to get it first- for FREE ($12.45 value)!
Normally when a person subscribes, their subscription starts with the upcoming issue which can take a while. But, TOS thought about that when they planned theirFall Special.
If you subscribe now with their Fall Special, you'll get
Almost 50% off the cover price for 2 years The current Fall issue as soon as it is ready
6 Bonus gifts
12 months of Teacher's Toolbox, which contains a FREE E-Book every month PLUS, the new E-Book, Homespun Holidays for FREE!
Checked email first thing. That in itself can get me sucked in.
Need to shower. So, why, oh why, is my son using my bathroom? Three bathrooms in the house, and he goes into my bathroom... I need to work on this.
I am so excited about all the goodies I have been receiving as a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew! I can't wait to begin writing my reviews for you to read. So far I have, in my possession to review for you,
I also received a mystery novel from a homeschooling mom and daughter... but I'll have to edit this later, cause I don't have their info in front of me.
So, you can see I'm going to be busy. But, I'm just lovin' it! These materials are, for the most part, wonderful. I'll post the good and the bad, right here. Stay posted.
First, the groundwork for this story is that for a couple of years there has been some unusually rapid deterioration in the vision in my right eye. On my last visit to the eye doctor, she was concerned that she was seeing Macular Degeneration, and wrote me a referral to a specialist.
Tack on to that some information about my little guy's interest this year. He wanted to study the five senses. I owned a Scholastic book called The Body Book (you can click it on the sidebar), so I made copies of all the student pages in preparation for going through it. The first section is on the Five Senses, so it is a good fit.
So, yesterday I had this specialist eye doctor appointment, and I was wondering if I should get a sitter, when it dawned on me that I could try to capitalize on the visit in light of our studies. Would the doctor be able to talk to my son at all, or would the office be too busy?...
Well, not only was the great doctor able and willing to, but he also let my son look INTO my eye! He let my son look through two different pieces of equipment. My son saw the optic nerve (it is yellow), the retina (it is orange), blood vessels that feed the eye, ...the whole bit. He said my son is the only child his age that he knows of who has ever seen some of that stuff! It was so cool!
So then we came home and put together the paper model of the eye (over two days). Now I just wish he ever enjoyed coloring, because I really wanted him to use the colored pencils and get the model colored, but I don't know if it's going to happen. I'll keep working on him.
Today's entry will be a review of a fantastic product created by the makers of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine (TOS).
This complete home and school planner brought to you by The Old Schoolhouse Magazine® is now ready to download!
The Schoolhouse Planner is a digital planning book of 247 pages, chock-full of helpful, useful information, forms, and inspiration. It is such a large document, and so full of so many wonderful things, that I will have a hard time telling you about all of them... Your eyes will start to gloss over dreamily... And best of all, it is a PDF document, but you can type in it and SAVE the changes you have typed into it! You will see why this is so wonderful as I tell you about it.
Articles: So far I have read inspirational articles on teaching math, the importance of teaching foreign languages, and how to use unit studies. Articles I am still looking forward to reading on teaching Geography, Solving Science Struggles, communication, "Hands-on" History, Chore Training Tips, how art enriches our lives, and Homeschooling through High School.
Recipes: The Planner is divided into months of the school year, with a two-page-spread calendar for each month which can be printed (pages back-to-back) and put into your 3-ring Planning Notebook. Between each month there are, among other things, yummy recipes for you to try out.
There are information pages on famous composers and artists, countries and capitals, the Periodic Table, United States and state capitals, U.S. Presidents and their wives, a history timeline, 7 Wonders of the Ancient World and of the Modern World, important U.S. documents (such as the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, etc.).
Forms: This is where the type and save feature is really wonderful! The Planner has in it so many, many wonderful forms. There are forms for annual plans, yearly goals, curriculum planning, courses of study, a twelve-year planning page, recording sheets for curriculum recording, yearly grades, daily grades, progress reports, crafts completed, and on and on. For the 12 year planning pages, you can add to it/adjust it each year. The other forms can be filled in and saved, and reused each year, enterring the changed information for each new year.
There are pages for descipleship records, Bible reading and memorization records, audio/video re and book reading logs, field trip planning, nature journal pages, Science lab sheet pages, and website and vendor information pages. There are actually also resource recommendation pages in each month's section throughtout the entire Planner.
There are pages to comple important personal information such as phone number and addresses of contacts, information for babysitters, family health records, schedules and reminders of homekeeping chores for mom and for kids, daily and family chore charts, many different formats for chore charts. There are pages for budgeting, financial inventory, gift budget, prayer journal, Bible reading, important dates to remember, garden plans and checklist, inventory of major appliances and electronics. There are pages for keeping track of things borrowed or loaned, vacation plans, pet health visits, agift wish lists, and on and on.
Improvements I would suggest for the creators to make to The Schoolhouse Planner:
Table of Contents: I would like to see the Table of Contents linked to the rest of the document so that when the reader points the cursor to an item in the TOC, one point and click would take the person immediately to the desired page.
Table of Contents, again: The contents is listed by order, but page numbers are not given, so I have to scroll through the entire document to find out where something is and I can't just enter the page number into the top of the form where there is a nice little feature to do just that to get to the page you want...
Two-page calendar spread: It would be very helpful if page two of each spread said somewhere, even in very faint print, what month it went to. Repeatedly I am second guessing if my printer has messed me up, as I try to make sure that page one of November is on the back of page two of October, etc.
Calendar (again): I would like to see the calendar pages presented in a changeable format, so that this resource can truly be used year after year. In other words, the place where it indicates on a calendar that August 14th, for instance, is a Thursday, should be typeable so that next year it could be changed and used to have the dates for August of 2009.
Overall, while this was a long, yet brief, overview, I just want to say what an awesome resource this is. For it's price, I personally would have appreciated having a hard copy given to me with a compact disk included, which would have the pdf document on it. I'm not a super computer whiz, so I don't know if a document that size would fit on a disk in pdf format, but it was just a thought.
So, everyone, go to The Schoolhouse E-Store and download the free sample pages to peruse, and think about investing in the wonderful resource for your homeschool (link below):
Anyway, I wanted to post some links here so that I can refer back to them later. I got these notebooking links from Debra in MO's post on one of the Ambleside Yahoogroups:
I cannot say this any better, so I am posting here the wishes of the Ambleside Online Advisory Committee for all of us for our Christmas days:
Our wish for each and every one of you is time for bliss in your days here at the close of the year -- that you would bless yourself and your loved ones with atmosphere and life; with the sorts of moments
that, if missed, can't be recaptured.
Time... -- To gaze long into the eyes of a child who is vanishing into maturity with every tick of the clock.
-- To listen -- not hurriedly but happily -- to young voices that will soon deepen and mellow.
-- To sit and just hold each child -- even the ones who think they're too big for such -- and marvel that they are now no less a miracle than the day you first held them.
-- To become as little children and just play with them.
-- To brew up some mulled cider and go caroling.
-- To make gingerbread folk or even a cottage, get glue-y glitter all over the kitchen, cut snowflakes for the windows, simmer orange peels and spices on the stove just for the heady aroma, make a Christmas
feast tree outside for the birds or cinnamon-scented play-dough for the little cousins, roast marshmallows at the hearth,read "The Gift of the Magi" aloud, and make orange-and-clove pomanders for friends.
-- To tell stories of holidays past, and pass on the heritage of loved ones now gone.
-- To write loving, thoughtful, commemorative letters to each child, for them to keep and treasure forever as a remembrance of this fleeting time in our lives together -- a mother's narration of her year with the child.
These are the sorts of things that we feel spark and define the kind of Life-with-a- capital-L that CM would wish for all of us. And for busy moms like all of us to do these things, we must sometimes take a
little rest from other things.
So much that is at the heart of this thing we call Ambleside Online is all about balance, about seeking that right time for every purpose under heaven... and about having the vision to see the need, and the
will to make it so. Taking a holiday break on this list, therefore, seems a very Ambleside thing to do.
May you seize this found time and transform its moments into sweet memories. Take hold of joy this Christmas season -- that's our wish for you.
God bless us, everyone --
The Advisory
Donna-Jean Breckenridge, Lynn Bruce, Wendi Capehart, Karen Glass, Leslie Noelani Laurio, Leslie Smith, and Anne White
Blessings to all of you and your families, my friends. I am looking forward to a fresh year, to finish up with things that are hanging over me so that I can focus more on my family, especially on homeschooling my son, who is growing up so quickly! I don't want to miss any more important time in character formation and training time with him!
First of all, thank you, to my friends who post comments. You are so kind, and you brighten my day!
[I've come back - 3 p.m. - to edit the items below to show what I've gotten done! In brackets.]
Today's homeschool plans will include:
1) 15 minutes on Studydog Phonics; [done]
2) One math page from Modern Curriculum Press Math, Book A; [done]
3) Bible reading (already done) from Proverbs 29 and James 4; [done]
4) Pizza Hut trip so son can enjoy Book-It pizza reward for his hard work. [done]
Other possibilities for today:
raking leaves, before I get more rain or cold weather (today it is supposed to be 71 degrees, and I live in MD!
singing of a hymn, a folk song, and a patriotic song;
exercise by walking the one-mile loop around our block (if it doesn't start raining, which it might do today).
a poem for the day
a chapter from Paddle to the Sea
At issue is that I am still working on my lesson plans, and I really struggle to actually implement lesson plans at the same time as I am working on them. I just want to get them finished and THEN start. I am at about week 6 of Ambleside Online Year 1, and I am okay with that. While I am not Amblesiding (is that a verb? It means following the Ambleside lesson plans), I still have ds doing the daily phonics and the daily math, and hopefully the daily Bible reading to him.
Also, today, I will be trying to accomplish the following:
Touch base with the bank about acquiring back bank statements, which I either didn't receive or have lost, on the estate account;
Follow up with primary care physician about my PT referral;
Make appointment with physical therapist for my first appointment for my shoulder;
Call Herff Jones to order my daughter's cap and gown for June graduation;
Call my friend, Chris, to let her know daughter can babysit tomorrow night; [done]
Call friend, Noreen, to let her know daughter cannot babysit tonight... [done]
I will also be trying to accomplish the following on the Flylady front:
Change my sheets, or at the very, make my bed; [done - made bed]
Do one load of laundry;
Swish and swipe my bathroom; [done - swiped anyway]
Maybe thorough-clean daughter's bathroom, since it is the main one for guests, and I'm not happy with the condition it is currently in;
sweep the kitchen;
vacuum the stairs;
defrost the beef for dinner...
In case you don't guess, I'm writing it here because it helps me. I don't actually have it written anywhere else (even though I should...), so I'm going to print this out and check it off as I get it done.
To save friends time looking, I am going to list links of free paper models you can download, print out and construct. Here we go (in no particular order):
!["E-Book:]("images/medium/products/HSPlannerCover_MED.jpg" "\"")
!["Enlarge]("includes/templates/tosstore/images/enlargeimage.gif" "\"")
