Our Four Ring Circus

Dec. 18, 2008

A Chase moment

I don't really blog anymore but I wanted to record for posterity another of the cute things Chase comes up with sometimes. Today we were listening to the radio in the van and 'Santa Clause is Coming to Town' was playing. He was a little taken aback by the line, "The kids in girl and boy land, will have a jubilee, they're going to build a toilet all around the Christmas tree."

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Sep. 30, 2008

The Results Are In - Follow-up on the Costco Poll

Earlier this month I posted a poll being taken by Costco asking if homeschoolers should be required to have state teacher certification. Obviously, I wasn't the only one who posted that poll. Here is what Costco had to say in their October issue of The Connection magazine:

"The response to this debate was unprecedented, with more than 10 times our normal response, in great part due to its being picked up on Internet discussion blogs. The overwhelming consensus was that certification was not needed, something that California's state appellate court agreed with shortly after the September issue of The Connection had gone to press. While thanking all those who participated, The Connection would like to reassert that the aim of the Debate, which is published every month, is to present topics for discussion that we feel would be of interest to our members. The company and the magazine take a neutral stance." (link)

Hmmm... it seems Costco might have heard from more than few homeschoolers on this issue and obviously, they don't want anyone to get the wrong idea.

Drum roll please...

97% said that homeschoolers should not be required to seek teacher certification. (link)

Thanks to all who took the time to respond!

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Sep. 6, 2008

Preschool - now the required prerequisite for Kindergarten

John works with a lady who was in tears this week over her 5 year old son - just one and a half weeks into his Kindergarten career and things aren't going well. It seems the teacher called her to set up an appointment to meet as her son was having trouble handling the academics of Kindergarten. Each day the children take turns putting up the month, day and year and her son just doesn't get it. It seems he doesn't 'get' a lot of things. He's behind. Exactly 8 days into Kindergarten and already he is behind in school.

How ridiculous! How could anyone be 'behind' not even 2 weeks into Kindergarten? Wasn't Kindergarten supposed to be that optional year to give kids a head start on 1st grade? Wasn't Kindergarten supposed to be about learning how to get along with others, function in a semi-structured environment, listen to stories, learn colors and shapes and letters? Not any more.

You see, this mother decided not to send her son to preschool last year. Because of this he hasn't learned all the 'pre-requisites' for Kindergarten and she is being made to feel as though she as done her child a great disservice. It is working.

I would assume 90+% of Kindergarteners in California have attended 1-2 years of preschool. Most of the kids know all those things Kindergarten used to be about and if your kid doesn't, he's behind before he ever walks through the door.

To add to my complete disgust this week with the idea that we should turn our kids over to the government to start their indoctrination prior Kindergarten, yesterday afternoon I was in Sam's Club with the kids. As the lady at the door was checking our receipt, she asked, "Has school started already, Mom."

I replied with a simple, 'Yes". We've actually been having school for 2 weeks now and she didn't need to know where.

She then volunteered the strangest little tidbit, "You know, they've got a program before Head Start now that will take kids as young as 18 months. They'll even potty train them for you."

Amazing! I'm sure that young mom working at Sam's thought she was doing me a big favor letting me know about this great new opportunity.

Why bother having children if your just going to turn them over to the 'system' at the first opportunity which apparently now comes at age 18 months.

To add insult to insult, as I exited Sam's, I found someone had attempted to remove my Palin/McCain bumper sticker. What is the world coming to?

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Sep. 1, 2008

Attention Homeschoolers - take an online poll from Costco

I haven't been browsing the blogs at all lately so this may have already spread around here like wildfire but in the event some may not have seen it, I wanted to bring your attention to Costco magazine's current debate topic. You can participate in their online poll on the topic of "Should parents be required to have teacher certification to homeschool their children?"

This is the link. Click on the check-mark to participate.

I believe you can take this poll daily. Not exactly a scientific survey but I hope the results are quite in our favor. It looks like the cut off for inclusion in next months issue of the print magazine is probably around September 11, 2008.

Enjoy!

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Aug. 28, 2008

Happy 40th Kelli!

My long-time friend Kelli, the maid of honor in my wedding, turns 40 today. Happy Birthday Kel!

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Jun. 5, 2008

The Nanny State

This is not what I had envisioned as my first post after my little hiatus but I just had to get this out of my head.

Yesterday I sat with the coaches wife watching Chase's T-ball game. The coach and his wife are wonderful people as people go. We have known them for 5 years as he coached Brendan for 4 years before becoming Chase's coach this year.

These are not particularly 'religious' people but they are doing their best to raise their kids right. They are very involved parents who make family the priority but the conversation I overheard between the wife and her mother disturbed me.

Her 4th grade son came home from school and shared with her all the things he had learned about his body including some of the anatomical parts and how they change and what they do. Her comment was, "My baby is growing up."

The grandmother remarked, "It's too bad they have to learn all that so young."

The mother replied, "Yeah, we didn't learn it until the 6th grade."

The grandmother said, "I don't think we learned it until 8th."

The mother then said, "But now they have to do it sooner because kids are maturing faster."

What struck me is the absolute trust these people placed in their public school to know that now is the best time and this is the best way to accomplish what has to be done.

In a way, they were lamenting some loss of innocence of this 9 year old little boy but they weren't upset about it and they were not second guessing the school's decision to teach him these things at this time.
It was completely natural to them for the school to perform this function as if it were no different than teaching him to read and write. It was just a given that children should learn this stuff in school on the school's timetable and in whatever why the school deems best.

It is so foreign to me to trust the educational system of this state and yet obviously many good people think that because the curriculum is chosen by professionals who have experience in these matters, it is what is best for their child.

Wake up people!

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Mar. 8, 2008

Breaking the Law in California

I suppose there isn't a homeschooler on the planet who hasn't heard of the recent decision here in California which determined that all children must attend a full-time public or private day school or be tutored at home by a teacher certified to teach the specific grade level of the child.

It is somewhat amazing that a 3 judge panel ruling on a single complaint against one family has managed to effectively make 100,000 parents now criminally negligent for the truancy of their children.

The reality is, this is a day that was almost bound to come eventually but no one anticipated it would come at this time or in this way. Because this was a case of suspected child abuse in a single family, the proceedings were confidential and completely off the radar of our watchdog groups such as Home School Legal Defense Association. We didn't see this coming because unfortunately, the parents in this case allowed themselves to be represented by a court appointed attorney rather than availing themselves of the many Christian legal associations which are set up just for situations like this.

The thing I find most annoying is the reason the prosecuting organization gives for insisting the children in this family be placed in school. "The organization's chief concern was not the quality of the children's education, but their "being in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety."

Obviously Child Protective Services did not find enough evidence of abuse to remove the children from the home but they wanted these children to be watched and they wanted the school to watch them. It puts a whole new spin on the idea of 'nanny state'.

The Department of Education in California has long been in the business of more than just educating. A child who enrolls in public school here must visit the dentist and receive certification of their oral health. They must visit a doctor to ensure their physical health. They must provide proof of several required immunizations. Their parents are asked to provide income information so it can be determined if the child qualifies for free breakfast and lunch programs whether or not the parents actually want to avail themselves of these programs. Free breakfast and lunch are not limited to school aged children nor are they limited to the school year. These school based breakfast and lunch programs are available all summer to qualifying individuals from ages 2 to 17.

The state also provides free before school and after school care as well as preschool services. Special education services such as speech therapy are available to children as young as 2.

Teachers have long been required to report any suspicion of abuse and it seems now, children are required to be seen regularly by teachers to ensure their safety.

The family in this case did have their children enrolled in a private Christian school which acted as an umbrella providing oversight to the homeschooling of the children but apparently, this wasn’t enough to appease the court.

How could a court make such a finding? Because the statutes in the education code pre-date the current homeschooling movement and require "children ages 6 to 18 to attend a full-time day school, either public or private, or to be instructed by a tutor who holds a state credential for the child's grade level." No one has ever found it necessary to challenge these statutes until now.

Until now, homeschooling in this state has operated under the statutory provisions afforded to private schools and so, in effect, homeschooling doesn't exist in California and it never has. Private schools here are completely unregulated and all you have to do to be a private school is file a simple on-line form once a year. For this reason, rather than homeschools, we just have a zillion family sized private schools. This is how the game has been played and the state was happy to play along.

As evidence of this game, homeschool organizations here (which aren't called homeschool organizations because homeschooling doesn't exist) have long cautioned us not to call ourselves homeschoolers but to say that we "privately educate our children at home."

Both the Department of Education and the homeschooling community found it easiest just to let sleeping dogs lie on a rather grand scale. Now it seems someone has finally kicked the dog.

What happens next? We have several avenues of recourse and wonderful representation for our cause. I am not the least bit worried.

The Home School Legal Defense Association has already set the wheels in motion on a variety of options any of which could solve the problem. Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute has agreed to take over this case and appeal it to the California Supreme Court (the same court which is very likely to legalize gay marriage in California within the week). Brad's grandmother was a long time friend of my family and Brad is a very competent attorney with lots of experience defending Christians against the assault on our values. Just last month Brad offered to take our case if we chose to pursue our complaint regarding evolution on California state testing.

If all of these legal avenues should fail, our governor has already committed to changing the laws in our favor. Governor Schwarzenegger released a statement yesterday calling the ruling "outrageous" and saying "If the courts don't protect parents' rights then, as elected officials, we will." Let's just hope this all plays out before the changing of the guard at the governor's mansion.

In addition to all of these human resources, our greatest confidence is in God. The first I heard of this case was a comment here on my blog from a blog friend all the way in Rhode Island who was already praying about this situation before most Californians new it existed. With our army of prayer warriors, our faithful Heavenly Father, strong legal representation and a governor who has pledged to protect us, I just don't see how we could lose. The worst case scenario is that we would have to move and there are 1000s of families that would move before they would put their children in public school.

To all of you who are praying, thank you. I look forward to the day when this situation is resolved and hopefully homeschooling will gain even stronger footing here in California because of it.

To learn more about this case and to sign an on-line petition sponsored by HSLDA, please click here.

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Mar. 5, 2008

Simplifying the simple

A few worthless observations I've made lately...

If you take something that is already very easy and make it even easier, it will sell.

Two acquisitions we've made recently illustrate this point. For a few years I have considered purchasing new toilet paper holders. Our old holders were still very functional but John had long complained that people would tend set the new roll on the counter rather than load it into the dispenser. Our holders were the pressure bar, spring loaded type - it takes about 2 seconds to take off the bar, drop the empty roll in the trash and replace it with a new roll.

Now I've found an even simpler way. I purchased new hook style fixtures last summer. They don't require removing the bar. You just slide the empty tube off and slide on the new roll. This has completely solved the problem. We've taken a two second job down to a 1.5 second job but somehow that half second made all the difference.

Similarly, a few years ago I changed dishwasher detergent. I found that the little Electrasol tablets were actually cheaper by the load than the old Costco powder I had previously purchased so I switched. I liked the tablets better - you just unwrap, drop and close rather than pouring the powder which often tended to overfill the trough.

Now I have discovered an even easier way. The new Cascade tablets have no wrapper to remove but instead the coating dissolves releasing the detergent. By just eliminating that little step of removing the wrapper, Cascade has me hooked. I don't even want to use the half a box of Electrasol I have left in the cupboard.

From powder, to wrapped tablets, to unwrapped tablets the difference in time and energy required is ever so slight and yet that slight difference makes all the difference.

I still buy coffee in a tin as opposed to the pods. I still buy old fashioned laundry detergent rather than the more expensive all-in-one premeasured packets. But when price isn't an obstacle, appealing to folks lazy nature by making a task even slightly easier is a sure ticket to success.

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Mar. 1, 2008

Back in business

I've been frozen out of Homeschoolblogger for about a month now. I was not able to get any homeschool blog site to load and yet seemingly every other site on the Internet was at my disposal. It was odd. I tried everything I could think of on my end to troubleshoot the problem but nothing seemed to work. I did report it to Homeschoolblogger a week ago, maybe they pushed the magic button because this morning I got in with no trouble. I hope it lasts. More later...

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Jan. 17, 2008

Discrimination pays us a visit

UPDATE 1/23: I'm not the only one who saw the inclusion of evolution in testing as discrimination. Last weekend my mother happened to be talking to an attorney who heads a prominent Christian law firm here in California. She mentioned this situation to him and he told her if questions on evolution ever negatively impacted our scores, to let him know and he would take our case.

Last night as I was resting with Alyssa before she fell asleep, she asked me some questions that came back to haunt me this morning at 3 AM. The more I've thought about them, the more they bother me. I don't know why this took me by surprise but I just never gave it a thought until now.

The homeschool program we joined this year offers us the opportunity to have the children tested by a couple different methods each year. This week Alyssa and Brendan are taking a test made by the Scantron corporation. I've known of Scantron for as long as I can remember as they made the answer sheets we used on all Standardized Testing I took growing up. When their name surfaced as the publisher of this testing, it struck me as a little odd so I did some research.

Scantron is still in the business of making answer sheets but they have also developed testing of their own. It is internet based diagnostic type testing and it intrigued me. Everyone starts at basically the same place, the tests are not different for each grade level as I understand it. The test progresses with increasingly harder questions until the student no longer answers the questions correctly and then the test adjust alternating easier and harder questions until it finds the highest level at which the student is able to function. It pinpoints strengths and weaknesses along the way. It is not timed and the student can take the test in as many sittings as desired as the test can be stopped and started again from any point.

The tests can be taken at home but the homeschool program recommended we use the services of their computer lab as it is a more ideal testing environment. The test has 4 components: Math, Reading, Language, and Science/Social Science. Brendan, as a 3rd grader, only takes the first 3 while Alyssa takes all 4. Yesterday Alyssa completed the Reading and Science portions and last night was obviously still dwelling on some of the questions.

The questions she asked me were on evolution. She is plenty familiar with the concept of evolution and she recognized immediately what these questions were. Though she knows we believe evolution to be false, she did her best to apply logic to the questions and get them correct. When asked to name the animal from which the frog evolved, she reasoned fish was the best answer. When asked to date the earliest turtles, she gave the best answer from her experience though it was certainly not what they wanted. The choices were 3000 years, 30,000 years, 300,000 years, 300 million years. She went with 3000 which, of the choices, is certainly the closest to what we teach. The answer they were looking for was the opposite extreme of course.

Why didn't it occur to me that my children would be tested on evolution? I suppose because in my experience, I don't recall evolution ever appearing on standardized testing. Having grown up in Christian schools, perhaps the curriculum publishers from which we obtained all our testing materials made sure they used versions that were sanitized to suit us. I don't recall evolution appearing on the SAT or ACT tests I took in high school. Maybe I've just forgotten or perhaps 20+ years ago, they didn't test on evolution.

Last year Alyssa took the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. If evolution appeared on that, she didn't mention it. We obtained this test from Bob Jones so perhaps they have managed to find testing without evolution.

It is interesting to note that when I checked the California Education Code content standards for science, evolution does not appear until grade 7. The testing we are taking is supposed to match content standards. It seems Alyssa may have made her way up to 7th grade science questions but I kind of doubt it. More likely, the people who wrote the test know very well that children are exposed to evolution in school long before junior high.

Why does this bother me so much? Because America was born of the sacrifice of Christians who believed that people were endowed by their CREATOR with certain rights. Because the educational system now requires that we replace that CREATOR with a system of unprovable scientific theory and it discriminates against those who refuse to do so by relegating them to lower test scores. Because my daughter wasted her mental energy and the logical mind God gave her trying to sift through answers she knew weren't true to questions that weren't relevant and should never have been asked. Because this is probably the first of many times this scenario will happen to my children.

I could decline to have them take the science test in the future. I could decline all the tests. I could choose to have them do the science test at home where I can help level the playing field on the questions I don't want them to answer. But I shouldn't have to do any of these things because I should live in a country with an educational system tolerant enough to make room for the beliefs of the people who founded it; open minded enough to see that something that can't be proven should at best be relegated to the realm of possibility and not force fed to everyone as the one and only absolute fact.

The supposedly tolerant, open minded, non-discriminatory educational system that claims to make room for all in reality has no place for people like me. This is one of the big reasons I homeschool. I make the sacrifices necessary to make sure my children get the facts the way I believe them to be and it really irks me to be blind sided by the educational system I try so hard to avoid.

This concludes my rambling rant for today.

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My Blog

A few years ago, when our oldest was 4 and her two brothers were both in diapers, my in-laws were a few days into a visit from their home 3000 miles away when my father-in-law noticed that the rug under the dining room table was in serious need of vacuuming. He is not prone to domestic duties (his wife is a great housekeeper) but seeing the need, he decided to try his hand with the Hoover. As soon as 'Grandpa' declared his intention to get out the vacuum, four little feet ran for the toy box to get vacuums of their own. We had one toy vacuum and we improvised a second from a 'popper' push toy. The baby, who was not yet walking, was right in the thick of things on all fours, never one to be left out. Grandpa, trying to maneuver the self-propelled 'Wind-tunnel' around the 10 foot rug while avoiding the table legs and dodging his three little helpers, remarked in exasperation, "I just wanted to clean the rug, I wasn't looking to start a three ring circus." Welcome to my life!

About Me

My name is Tiffany. I am a 40 year old mother of 4. My husband, John, and I planned to homeschool even before we married 18 years ago but it would be several years before our oldest would be ready to start on this journey. We had our children in alphabetical order, quite by accident at first, but once we got started, we figured we had to keep it going. They are Alyssa 10, Brendan 9, Chase 6, and Emily 4. Our 4th baby, D, miscarried at 13 weeks. We have no intention of making it to Z.

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