Lazy Creek Homeschool - Homeschool Blogger

Excellence in Math

Wed, 1 Apr 2009 13:57:00 -0500

I've been planning this for some time. I am an evil homeschool mom.

Today, I tested the older two using a school-style setting. I gave them the final test from last year's math module, which they completed 10 months ago. They did not have a review period beforehand. They wrote the test through the lunch hour, on empty stomachs (lunch is late today for a variety of reasons).

Banana: Scored 81.5% (46.5 out of 57)
Spazz: Scored 78% (44.5 out of 57)

The program is Systemath, and it's a great middle-years foundational program that will make all high school math much easier due to its principle-based approach. It's been remedial for me just to watch a few lessons with the kids as I keep informed of what they're doing. It has reproducible worksheets, so I can use it for all the kids, and the cost is very low. Plus, I understand the curriculum author is very accessible and helpful if you have questions about using the program.

I explained to the kids afterwards how exceptional their circumstances were compared to "standardized" educational testing, and how many kids I knew in junior high who skated through with 65% or 70%, with the knowledge right at hand and substantial review right before testing. I hope this is a major confidence-booster for them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
© Copyright Cathi-Lyn Dyck 2005-2009

New Bible Conference!! Too Exciting!!!

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:23:00 -0500

For years, Dave and I have talked about starting up a Bible conference in our area. There are a lot of reasons for this idea.

--1--Need for Bible overview teaching. We were struck by New Tribes Mission's perspective on the need for people to understand the foundation of the Gospel in order to understand the Gospel itself. In their "Creation to Christ" Bible study guide, they talk about how numbers of people professed Christ, only to add Him as just another deity in their existing collection of idols. There's a truth in that for our own culture.

--2--Need for Bible teachers who "teach and leave." As one local pastor said to me, sometimes it's helpful for teachers come in from outside to simply teach a topic without any internal political agenda. Often, within a church environment, doctrine becomes part of the political fabric and the political fabric becomes part of doctrine. We've seen this problem deeply entrenched in our own church, where it has become impossible for anyone within the congregation to bring the much-needed teaching which could heal the church, because it's viewed through a distorted political lens. This is a particular problem in a small-town environment, where a shortage of people causes entrenchment in relationships and church roles.

--3--The response of believers to teaching ministries like Answers in Genesis. Christians aren't cowards. But there's a need for real-life answers. There's a type of ministry direction which attempts to connect with the culture by allowing the culture to dictate to it--what music, what attitudes, and even what spiritual content. Then there's a type of ministry that brings out what God's Word says about our culture's specifics. Because it's all in there. The Bible is sufficient.

--4--The concern of believers about the present world state. One of my husband's relatives happens to be a highly informed, world-class speaker, researcher and analyst who looks specifically at trends in globalization. He is excellent at making clear the connections between global politics, economics and religion, and showing how it affects individuals in their own corner of the world.

We also have a friend who practices Messianic Christianity and is an excellent resource for explaining things about Israel. Both the Middle East and world finances are at the center of the news...but what's the Christian perspective? We actually have local guys who know this stuff. But people don't know about them.

Anyway, the long and the short is, we're goin' for it.

Five men have stepped forward to serve as directors, and others have volunteered to help out with other aspects of the conference.
I've done a website and some graphic design, all to be released soon.
There is a host church in the works.
We have three guest speakers for our inaugural day--two regional resources and a national creation speaker.

I feel like Daffy Duck--"Woohoo! Woohoo! Woohoo!"

-------------
© Copyright Cathi-Lyn Dyck 2005-2009

Video of our Family's Sailboat

Fri, 6 Feb 2009 22:28:00 -0600

For those of you with faster connections, here's what it's like on the Unschool Ship.

© Copyright Cathi-Lyn Dyck 2005-2009

Facing Burnout

Fri, 6 Feb 2009 22:02:00 -0600

I was going through some family videos from last year, from our cross-country travels. It was a really neat stop, but I wondered why I'd picked such a dark, introspective song as background for the clips.

Then I remembered how I'd been feeling just before we left. I also remember feeling the same way the year before. It's not the kids, they're great. It's everything else. We've been living in a renovation for nine years, and this winter's been the worst. We are literally without half our house right now, all crammed into the north end as we do major repair to the south end.

It's the church. That's nothing short of a travesty. I feel lost. We made it our home and our heart, and it's become a black hole that just keeps sucking more and more out of us. When it got to the point where the children were showing signs of hurting from it, that was it for me. But I don't know where to turn to go forward. It was very much my tie to other Christians and to my small-town community.

It's the job. We never know for sure whether Dave's going to be home or not, whether he'll still be working in the same part of the plant from one day to the next. They're deliberately and chronically understaffed, and they treat their human resources worse than the machinery. After all, the machines cost money. But they can always hire another person at no extra cost to them.

I'm constantly restless and irritable. I often find myself feeling trapped by the place where I live--the remote location, the house and yard, the people.

I'm just waiting for March. At that time, David and I will be done with our full-time church commitments. After that, maybe I can begin to breathe again. We made plans. We want to take the family around to different towns, doing gospel music. We want to start a non-church, Bible-based project that focuses on the Word and feeds the starving, sick congregations we keep encountering. We want to get back to encouraging and uplifting. As it stands, the people we have loved won't accept it from us.

I think the best cure for a broken heart is to seek God's wholeness.

------------
© Copyright Cathi-Lyn Dyck 2005-2009

Schooling Online - A New Experiment For Us

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:16:00 -0600

Fact #1: I hate mornings. My younger kids love them. My older kids have to be dragged out of bed.
Fact #2: We have an underused family website that pretty much functions as our unschooling portfolio.

I'm going to combine the two and see if we can generate a positive effect. The plan is to use the main blog as an assignment launchpad. We can then continue "scrapbooking" online at our homeschool journal.

My (possibly naive) hope is that if I make the main blog our browser's homepage, the kids can pull it up in the morning while my brain is still mud and have some fun doing indirectly-directed activities together. As Bill Jack would say, "Buy time. Sell rope." (No, wait, that's out of context. Anyway....)

The assignment completion "prizes" will be YouTube videos or the like--maybe some "stealth" education through humour--that the kids can watch on the main blog. We've used YouTube as a successful bribe in the past. (You can see the "Engineer's Guide To" videos have made their way to our webhome.) I'd like to use the Internet more, but I want to know my kids are on sites that are totally safe for them, if I'm too fuzzy or busy to supervise. And, hey, look at that: I have a site I can customize to our schooling style.

The desired results: (A) Younger kids' time and energy occupied until mine catches up. (B) Older kids more motivated to get out of bed. (C) Mom (maybe?? sometimes???) gets to wait for the coffee to kick in before having to open the Complaints Bureau, deploy Law Enforcement, call out Animal Rescue, engage the Sanitation Department, deploy Correctional Services for transfer of inmates from the Horizontally Snoring Block to the Vertically Whining Block, etc., etc.

If anyone wants to try the activities for themselves and give me feedback on how I can do it better or easier, it would be much appreciated and highly motivating. I'm sure my first few assignment descriptions will need tweaking until I get better at designing the directions. And, hey, if you get good results with the project ideas, post a pic and let me know.

I'll let y'all know how it goes.

-------------------------------
© Copyright Cathi-Lyn Dyck 2005-2009