Heartfelt Homeschool - Homeschool Blogger

I'm clearing out my bookshelves!!!

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:38:00 -0500

Are you gearing up for next school year? Check out my eBay listings! I have 75 items listed, all starting at .99 cents. Lots of books and used curriculum in good condition! Whatever I sell helps me pay for our new curriculum, so I appreciate you looking! Thanks!

~LISA

California Court against Home Schooling

Sat, 8 Mar 2008 10:38:00 -0600

LEGISLATIVE NEWSFLASH -- March 7, 2008
From: Roy Hanson's Private and Home Educators of California

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As you probably know, on Thursday, February 28th, The Second Appellate District in Los Angeles County ruled that a homeschooling family from Southern California (not a member of HSLDA) did not have a right to "homeschool" under the California Constitution unless the parent is a credentialed tutor.
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Current Situation
Nothing has changed in California regarding your homeschool. HSLDA maintains that the advice they have given home school families for some twenty-five years is still accurate and that filing a private school affidavit, or enrolling in a private school independent study program (I.S.P) are valid options under the law in California.

In summary, homeschoolers should not panic but continue to home school as in the past. The leaders of the statewide homeschool groups and HSLDA are coordinating with each other on this issue on a regular basis. Pray for a positive outcome. The attorneys at HSLDA are working very hard during this time to prepare for additional legal action to reverse this decision. Seeking legislation at this time is unnecessary and likely dangerous.
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Governor's office press release Friday, March 7, 2008
Gov. Schwarzenegger Issues Statement Regarding Court of Appeals Home Schooling Ruling
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today issued the following statement regarding the recent Second District Court of Appeals ruling on home schooling:

"Every California child deserves a quality education and parents should have the right to decide what's best for their children. Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children's education. This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts and if the courts don't protect parents' rights then, as elected officials, we will."
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Background
This ruling resulted from a Juvenile Court case on allegations of abuse or neglect, which originally had nothing to do with homeschooling. When the Juvenile Court judge would not prohibit the parents from home schooling their children, the court-appointed attorneys for the children went to the California Court of Appeals. The Appellate Court went further than they needed to, and essentially ruled that State law does not provide any options that allow parents to teach their own children at home.

Future court action on this Appellate Court ruling cannot occur until after March 29th. This ruling is a very serious matter but not a cause for panic. There are legal options still open to pursue in the Courts. HSLDA is working to overturn this decision in the courts. In other words, this Appellate Court ruling is not the final say.

It is important to realize that no laws have changed that affect private schools whether in one's home or on a campus. California is still one of twelve states where homeschoolers can operate legally under the private school provision. See our Legal Fact Sheet. The Court does not have the power to change the law but only to interpret it, and this court has made critical errors in their interpretation of private school laws as they apply to private home education.

No court has the authority to universally order every homeschooler into a public or private campus school. Under due process the court can only issue orders directed to the parties before the court. Any attempts of enforcement would have to be one family at a time. As in the past, a family could be charged with truancy and then go to a SARB hearing even before any court hearing. This should not be a dread for anyone who is a member of HSLDA. If you are not a member of HSLDA you should join now!

If a public official comes to your door and tells you that home schooling is illegal and that you must put your kids in a public school or a private campus school, do not let them in your house, call HSLDA if you are a member, and let the HSLDA attorney talk to the person at the door. HSLDA attorneys are available to their members 24 hours a day seven days a week.

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What can homeschoolers do right now to help?
(1) This court's ruling could provoke well-meaning individuals to seek a legislative remedy. Legislation at this time would be detrimental to our current freedom to home school privately in California. If you become aware through first hand knowledge of any such attempt to have a legislator introduce legislation addressing or dealing with home schooling, please contact us at contat@pheofca.org immediately!

(2) Please encourage your home schooling friends to join HSLDA now for two reasons! (a) Membership in and contributions to HSLDA will help provide the financial resources needed to carry on this complex and lengthy court process for judicial relief from this current ruling. This will benefit all homeschoolers. (b) HSLDA membership will protect your family should you be contacted as a result of this Appellate Court ruling. This will also give you the piece of mind that, whenever you might need it, you have immediate support from the only experienced highly successful team of attorneys specialized in defending private home schoolers in California and our Nation.

(3) In all situations, it is the Lord Jesus Christ Who is our refuge, provider, and protector (Psalm 50:10-15). He is sovereign over all. Our Lord reigns! We are asking that you pray daily and also consider some kind of periodic fasting during this protracted battle that is shaping up. Pray for:
* those in authority, especially the judges involved in this case,
* the Long family involved in this case,
every fellow private homeschooling family
* HSLDA as they prepare to not only handle this situation but as they respond to all future legal contacts,
* for us here at Family Protection Ministries that God would sustain us and that we will be able to intercept every legislative proposal that could further erode our freedoms,
* CHEA and every other home school organization in California, and
* all other individuals and groups supporting this effort to defend home education.

(4) Continue on with a peaceful heart in your homeschooling and family life.

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Permission is given to reprint this document or distribute it by email in its entirety without alteration. You are encouraged to link to this document on our website www.pheofca.org

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Roy Hanson's HELP Tree
Private and Home Educators of California
P.O. Box 730
Lincoln, CA 95648-0730
Fax: (916) 415-9470
contact@pheofca.org

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The purpose of this communication is to present information and express our position on the issues addressed. We encourage you to research this for yourself and come to your own conclusions. Regardless of your position, we strongly urge you to exercise your constitutional right to express your position to your elected representatives. We have included an example of how we have expressed our position.

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DISCLAIMER: We are not responsible for the accuracy of copies printed, forwarded, or sent by any party other than directly from Private and Home Educators of California.

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CHEA of California
(562)864-2432
info@cheaofca.org

Tidepooling Field Trip

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:43:00 -0600

Today our co-op homeschool group did a field trip down at the tidepools. We had a wonderful time!

Here are my boys as we were walking to get to the tidepools. See the pier off in the distance? We had to walk past that to get to the tidepools.

My daughter with a friend underneat the pier:

My boys learning about a sea anemone that spreads itself out on the rock! You think when you go to touch the shells that it will be hard, but it's actually squishy, because there is a sea anenome underneath the shells!

There is a baby sting ray near my son's foot:

My daughter's favorite creature that she found was the hermit crab:

A fun family day!

My husband and daughter walking back the other way once our time at the tidepools was over:

Remembering the Blessing of Homeschooling

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:22:00 -0600

Well, I think this is the first year I've ever "done" anything for Valentine's day!! Seriously! And Ryan is eleven years old!

A few weeks ago, I was all stressed out about school and "fitting it all in" and God led me to read a few articles from someone in the homeschool world that I respect, etc., and it all just "hit home"... I need those reminders.

I mean... yes, we need to do the academic part of school. But that's not the BLESSING of homeschooling. The blessing of homeschooling comes when I cultivate our relationships with one another. And if I'm all stressed out and irritated and barking orders at them to "hurry up and get their school done" then what kind of relationships am I building? What kind of example am I being? ugh.

I was thinking about all of this during the weekend that I was supposed to go to a mom's conference a couple weeks ago, and instead I stayed home because my daughter had to have stitches. Anyway, I prayed about it and I wrote down what was on my heart about what I felt we SHOULD be doing everyday in our school. What are the bottom line basics?

What ALWAYS happens when I start getting us all on curriculum overload is our Bible time falls by the wayside. And that is SUCH a bad example to my kids. If I do anything, it should be Bible!

So, I sat down and wrote down the following: Bible, read literature aloud to my kids, math, basic language arts. That's it. Everything else is extra. It's fun, and most days we do fit in science, geography/history, and the likes. But, I was reminded that I don't have to teach EVERYTHING this year. So much of school is repetitive. As I looked through the kids' English curriculum, even though they are three different grade levels, they are basically teaching the same thing! Nouns, pronouns, verbs... over and over and over... just maybe have longer sentences, etc. It's so repetitive! I don't have to stress over them not learning it all this year. If they don't learn something this year, they will have the material again next year! And what in the world will they remember if they are crying about all of the busy work that they are doing? They certainly aren't going to remember the academic part of it.

Anyway!!!! I'm on a roll, huh? LOL So, I scratched just about everything that I had planned for the month of February... all of the busy work (seatwork) and decided to do something else at least for the remainder of February. First of all, I am setting all of our alarms for 8am instead of 7am. And everyone has been sleeping in that late. I think that the kids are tired, which lends to crankiness and whining and lack of focus during school time. Between the three of them, they are busy every night of the week with baseball, basketball, softball, CYT. So getting up later has been a good thing.

I'm telling myself to SLOW DOWN.. to enjoy our day... so we have breakfast, do music practice, chores... then we all sit down on the couch together and we do a bible lesson and then I read to them FIRST. And I'm not timing it! If it takes us an hour to do bible and reading, then so be it! Those are the most important things anyway! Then we do math and just a little bit of language arts... it takes about an hour to get the math and LA done. I purchased "The Shelter" copywork book that is made by Jeannie Fulbright, and that is what we are all using for language arts right now. So simple... and yet so full of teaching and learning possibilities. Best of all, they will be memorizing God's precious Word.

And then this week we've been doing the Valentine's study, and we are having so much fun. Learning the history of Valentine's day, learning about what the Bible says about love (eros, phileo, and agape), how we should love one another, making candy to give out to our neighbors and family, and creating our own poems of friendship to attach to the candies we've made. We were in the kitchen today making these candies and we made such a HUGE mess, but we were all laughing and just having the best time. THIS is the blessing of homeschooling, and much too often I lose sight of that.

The Scripture in Mark 8:36 says, "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?" Yes, academics are important. But we must remember that it is also part of this world. When we stand before God, He isn't going to ask us what our SAT scores are or how many A+ papers we got or what a pronoun is. He's going to ask us what we did with His word in our lives... how did we show His love to others...

So, if you're feeling discouraged and overwhelmed in your homeschool journey today, take a few steps back and ask the Lord to show you how to simplify a bit... and remember the blessing of homeschooling.

Studying Valentine's Day

Sat, 2 Feb 2008 16:34:00 -0600

Are you doing anything special for Valentine's Day in your homeschool?

I just purchased and downloaded a mini-unit study e-book titled, "A Christ-Perspective Valentine's Day Unit." You can find out more and/or purchase it yourself by clicking the link on the title.

It looks simple enough to follow and includes notebooking, craft, and activity ideas. After I sit down and peruse what I just printed out, then I will sit down and order some books online from the library that correspond with what we will be learning this month. What a fun, educational way to learn about Valentine's Day... and better yet, about the One True Love we have in Jesus!

If you're doing anything special in your homeschool related to Valentine's Day, leave me a comment and share. I love to see what other homeschoolers are doing.

~LISA

First Day of December Schedule

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:48:00 -0600

For science today, the kids started learning about the skeletal system. They cut out bones and glued them into their appropriate place.

Well, our first day with the December Schedule went pretty well.

I got up with my alarm and got right to work... cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed, dusted, laundry... however, the kids didn't want to get out of bed this morning. I didn't make a big deal about it; however, I did point out to them that we weren't able to go for our walk. They were bummed, so I think that will serve as incentive for tomorrow. I hope! :)

Skipping our 1/2-hour walk put us right on schedule, and it went really well. As I told the kids of my plans for science, creating a Christmas Around the World Notebook, and what we were going to do for history, they were really excited about it.

So, while everything went well, I am TIRED! It was a busy day for me! And, I have work to do this evening... so I better get going. Hopefully tomorrow will be another smooth day. :)

~ Lisa

December School Schedule & Plans

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 23:27:00 -0600

We have taken the last two weeks off from school. The time has just flown by. We've enjoyed our time off so much! The first week, we hung around the house, went to the Science Center downtown, played games, just enjoyed one another's company. The second week, we went to Disneyland for three days, celebrated Thanksgiving with our family, and went down to the bay to ride our bikes and play touch football for a few hours.

Ah... but tomorrow, it is back to reality. Eddie goes back to work tomorrow, and we will get back to school.
However, I have decided that we are going to change things up a little bit in our school days, starting tomorrow and going to the end of the year. I'm really looking forward to it and I think the kiddos will enjoy the change of pace as well.

I thought I'd share our new planned school day schedule and some of the things we will be doing. Feel free to use any of the ideas you think would fit into your school day. Also, feel free to post a comment if you have other suggestions that you think would enrich our December school time studies. :)

Though the following schedule does have times listed, please know that those times are merely a tool to help me stay on track. Rarely do we stick to the exact times on a schedule. We might be a little ahead or a little behind. The key is just to keep moving and do the next thing. So without further explanation, here is our planned schedule for December:

7am - 8:30am ~ (Same as before) Kids up, dress, chores, breakfast, brush teeth and hair, etc., music practice.

8:30-9am ~ Walk (my way of getting some needed exercise in; the kids usually ride their scooters and I walk quickly in order to keep up with them)

9-9:45am ~ Bible and Read Aloud Time. For our Bible time, we are going through The Narrow Way. During this time, I will sometimes read a chapter out of the Pearables Kingdom Stories. We are in Volume One right now. If we have time left, I will read to them from various literature stories. If we are all cozy and enjoying reading time, then we may go over our planned stopping time here. Flexibity. :)

9:45-10:15am ~ Math for everyone. Can't leave this out or they will all forget what they've learned so far! :)

10:15-10:30am ~ Break..... get a drink, run around outside; I can change the laundry; I can check my email.... it's a break. :)

10:30-noon ~ Science and/or Christmas Unit Study. We are finishing up studying the human body for science using Considering God's Creation, so we can start Apologia in the new year. See below for details on our Christmas Unit Study. :) I'm guessing we will probably finish this part of our school day before noon; however, in case we have a fun project or something for our Christmas Unit Study, I wanted to have that time.

12-12:45pm ~ Lunch / outside play

12:45-1:00pm ~ Vocabulary books and/or English review (my daughter will do some of her English PACES during this time; the boys will be given review English pages and/or use Wordly Wise)

1:00-1:15pm ~ Creative Writing journal/prompts. I give a topic or start a sentence, and they write....

1:15-2:00pm ~ U.S. History / Geography. They are learning the names of the states, their capitals, and abbreviations. They will be creating their very own State Notebook. For history, I will be reading aloud to them from True Stories of Great Americans for Young Americans which is from Lamplighter. This particular book was originally published and printed in 1898!! I *love* Lamplighter books!

That will officially be the end of our school day. If we have a particular science project to do or if the kids want to continue creating pages for one of their notebooks, then we will do that. We shall see!

To give a little bit more detail about my plans for our Christmas Unit Study:

Each child will create his or her own notebook. They have always enjoyed notebooking. I enjoy seeing what they create to add to their "book."

Some things that we are going to study are:

Names of Christ ~ since Christmas IS about Him!
Christmas Around the World ~ How do other countries celebrate Christmas?
Caribou, deer, reindeer ~ Are they the same thing? What's different about them? Why are reindeer associated with Christmas?
Symbols of Christmas ~ Candy cane, holly, mistletoe, etc.

I've checked out lots of books from the library related to Christmas. Many of them are just fun fictional literature books. Some will be nonfiction, like when we learn about deer, etc.

One of my HK sisters shared this great website called Jesse Tree Calendar. I'm don't know yet if I will do everything suggested on that site, but it's a helpful starting point. This site also has a suggestion for books to read related to Christmas, and many of them I found at our local library!

For ideas on learning about how Christmas is celebrated around the world, I have Galloping the Globe to help get me started. I also did a quick Google search and found all kinds of websites. I've listed them below. Please know that I have not yet searched many of these websites, so use with a watchful eye.

http://northpole.net/world.htm

http://www.theholidayspot.com/christmas/worldxmas/

www.the-north-pole.com/around/index.htm

http://www.santas.net

http://holidays.kaboose.com/xmas-around.html

So there you have it! Our December school schedule and plans. I'll check in regularly and let you know how it is going here. I'm hopeful that it is going to be a fun month of learning together.

~ Lisa

School Days

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 23:07:00 -0500

I thought I'd share some photos from the first few weeks of school here...

Here's Ryan doing his English on the white board. He really likes doing this!

Ryan is watching the MUS lesson for math... and he thought it was really funny how the cat was watching it with him:

Sarah likes MUS as well. This is her first year using it. :)

Every Monday at lunch time, my 80yo Grandma comes over for an hour to visit:

We are studying the human body right now for science. I got this new game called "Some Body" and tried it out this week. Here, they are taking reusable stickers and putting the body organs in the right places.

With the same game, we played Go Fish, except we were fishing for muscles and bones.

Every other Thursday, we go to a co-op "Class Day." Each of my children get to take three classes, and I have to stay and help teach somewhere as well. This year I am helping teach cooking for 4th-6th graders. My 1st grade dd and 3rd grade ds are in the same art class together and they made this at their last Class Day:

On the way home from Class Day today, my van got a flat tire! My dh had to come rescue us. And he gave our boys a hands-on lesson on how to change a tire. Since I had brought my camera with me to Class Day today, I had it for the flat tire, too.

Gotta love those life lessons that happen naturally!

~LISA

A New Schedule

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:54:00 -0500

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

A New Schedule

So, we are heading towards the end of week three of school. So far, things have been going really well. I've struggled with a bit of adjustment time... Bob Jones English and Reading is much more teacher intensive than any other curriculum I've used before for those subjects. I really like the student lessons, but I had to juggle our schedule/routine a bit to figure out what worked best for everyone.

I'm happy to say that we have stuck to the same schedule for a week now, and it's gone really well. The kids have even told me that they like the new schedule and want to keep doing things this way. Yah!! Love to hear that!

I thought I'd post our new schedule in case you're curious. I know that when I was first starting our homeschooling, peeking at others' schedules really helped to give me a starting place. If you have any questions, please post a comment!

~ Lisa

School Review #1

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 15:25:00 -0500

School Review #1

We are only into our second week of school, and from time to time I like to review what we are doing and evaluate what is working and what isn't.

So far...

What's Working:

Getting up on time!
Chores before breakfast
The Sunshine Jar
Bible Time
Our English and Reading curriculum (BJU)
Our Math curriculum (Math-U-See)
Using WizardsSpell for Spelling
Earning "Screen Time"
Reading incentives

What's not working:

Our schedule. I hope it doesn't take me half the year to figure out a routine that works for all of us.
Weekly planning ~ First of all, I need something more condensed where I can see all three of my children's lessons all at once. Secondly, I need something that I can give to my children at the beginning of each week, so they can see what they are supposed to be doing and not have to ask me for help every time we switch subjects.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for me regarding what's not working for us right now, please be sure to leave me a comment!

~LISA