My Homeschooling Journey - Homeschool Blogger

Walking with Him

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:41:00 -0500

An explanation...

I've found a lovely website that has totally inspired me. I want to spend hours and hours reading it. I'm not inspired to try to mimic her. I doubt seriously that would be real inspirational to me. Her poetic way with words and her deep thoughts have drawn me to my Savior. Her words have inspired me to do...

Her blog reads more like a devotional really. As I read her words this morning, I was deeply moved...to tears! How I've neglected my communion with God recently...the communion that we can only get through prayer. I read my Bible daily and pray. But the worshipful, communing prayer, I've negelcted.

On her website, she does what she calls Walking With God Wednesdays, and she invites other's to do so, also. Walking With God is prayer. It is communing with Him. I love it! So I too will be trying to Walk With God, every Wednesday. Well, all week actually, but I'll try to post it on Wednesdays.

Dear Heavenly Father,

My Abba and my Savior... I thank you this day for all that you have given me. I am humbled that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would even look my way, much less know my name. Who am I that you would consider me? Who am I that you would allow me to commune with You in prayer? How can I worship You enough? How can I adequately express my love for You...the Maker of the universe...the Seer of hearts....the Giver of life? May my life be a sweet fragrance rising up to you. Help me to be pleasing unto You... that is to be wholly submitted to You. Oh, God, I cry out to You...for You! I beg for more of You. I ask that You fill me with more of You. Show me how, Abba, to be closer. Reveal to me the wicked ways that are in me. Cleanse me from all unrighteousness...for Your sake. So I can be nearer to You...for my sake. Make me to know Your ways. Fill me with your Words...your precious Words. I pray Lord that you will continue to revive me. Father, I need to be revived. I want the flames of You burning within my heart...within my life. May I live to serve You, breathe You, and exalt You. I love you, Lord, my strength.

In Jesus name, Amen.

Spell to Write and Read review

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:04:00 -0500

I thought I had researched this enough. I checked with homeschool reviews. I bought Cathy Duffy's book and read her review of it. But apparently, I didn't research it enough. AFTER I've bought it, I've found that LOTS of people have a problem with this curriculum.

In my 11 years of homeschooling, I've never...and I do mean, never, had a more confusing curriculum. It is very poorly laid out. The curriculum wants you to read the first 11 steps before you ever even try to teach the curriculum. The curriculum itself reads sort of like, "If your child is already reading skip to step such-in-such, if not you need to complete this step and such-in-such step before you start the Wise Guide." Then when you look up the other step it will say, "You first need to do such-in-such and then complete this step...and you should begin your Learning Log now. See step 12 for more instructions on the learning log." On and on it goes throughout the book telling you complete different lessons. Half the time, I forget whether *I'm* supposed to be completing the step or if my child is supposed to complete the step first.

It also seems to be somewhat deceptive (not necessarily on purpose, but I've not ruled that one out yet) in how it is presented. The curriculum claims that 95% (or something like that) of our most common English words can be explained with phonics rules. Yet, it constantly has exceptions. Constantly. And instead of admitting that the English word in question is NOT following the established rule, they simply deny it. I'm on a yahoo list for SWR that is supposed to be a support. They've tried. They really have. When I ask a question, their inevitably seems to be NO answer. Or they will give an answer but it really doesn't apply. For intance, it has been quite confusing that they teach that the letter y says /y/ /i/ /I/...but not /E/. So when we have words like "baby" or "lazily", they are told to THINK ba bi (with long i). Why? Because /y/ does not make the /E/ sound in proper English. The problem with this is.... WE'RE NOT SPEAKING "PROPER ENGLISH"! WE SPEAK AMERICAN ENGLISH!

Still there are some things that I like about this curriculum. I like that some of their rules give some explanation for the spelling of certain words. And I think the idea that you should learn to spell in order to learn to read is a good one. I can "see" how this is very beneficial. But is it worth the confusion, frustration and extra time that it's taking to learn how to use this program? I don't think so. I wouldn't buy it again if I had it to do over and I may wind up abandoning it all together.

Just how hard is it to homeschool a special needs child anyway?

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:41:00 -0500

I'm not sure why I was so intimidated at the thought of homeschooling Josh. Sure, the public school had him under an IEP. Yes, the psychologist said he had severe disabilities. But I have seen Josh in action. Yes, he has some problems speaking clearly...but lot's of kids have this problem. He does NOT have a severe disability...I think I would have seen this by now. What he has is some developmental delays and a lot of B. O. Y in him, lol. His learning difficulties may indeed pan out to be some sort of learning disability but I'm not ready to declare that just yet. He's had a rough start in life his life has stabalized. Why is it that I am so intimidated at the prospect of homeschooling my son, even though I've been homeschooling my older children for 11 years?

Well, in part because the "experts" told me he has a problem. You see, I adopted Joshua from the foster care system in April 2009. I could not homeschool him as foster child so he attended a public school. He was in kindergarten last year and at the beginning of the year his teacher bragged on how well behaved he was and how smart he was. But by the end of the year, I was hearing how he wasn't keeping up with the rest of the class, and how he wasn't ready for first grade reading. In the same meeting that I was told he wasn't "meeting standards" in his academics, the teacher told me that this curriculum pushes kids far too hard, and that what she's teaching now used to be taught in 1st grade. She pointed out that many students were just not ready for this yet. But my child's "developmental delay" is showing because he wasn't keeping up with the curriculum that she just told me was too advanced for kindergarteners?

Yet, they wanted to push him on to the next level rather than keeping him back. Of course, if we had kept him back he would have been far older than most kids his age. He turned 6 in November of last year (while in K), so most of the school year he was older than the other kids. That would mean he'd be 7 and in kindergarten this year. I knew that I would homeschool him once the adoption was final but that last IEP meeting just confirmed what I knew all along. They said he was ready for 1st grade math but not 1st grade reading. They wanted my husband and I to decide whether we should send him to 1st grade or not...they recommended we send him to 1st grade. I felt like they were asking me to choose between learning to read and learning to add and subtract, taking the "he'll catch up" approach. I asked if the could do Kindergarten reading with him in 1st grade while still doing on-level math. After all, he is supposed to have an INDIVIDUALIZED EDUCATION PLAN, right? That is what IEP stands for. Nope. They said they can't do that. I asked about the option and putting him back down into kindergarten if he seemed to be struggling with first. Nope. Can't do that either.

However, once I sat down this summer and started researching and learning about curriculums, I began to build some confidence. I found curriculums that I think will help him not only learn to read but also excel at reading. I finally looked at a math curriculum that I think will help all of my children. My world has been opened up to new-to-me curriculums that I probably should have looked at long ago for some of my birth children.

This year for my "special needs" son (and incidentally ALL of my kids have special needs...some learn better one way than another, and some have very short attention spans...some are kinsthetic learners while others are audiotory) I have found curriculums that have occassionally been used in public school special needs classrooms, all with great success. So for my son, who was struggling in reading and math (despite what his inept public school thought) we will be using the following curriculum:

Spell to Write and Read - for reading, phonics, and spelling. This has been used very successfully in public school special ed. classrooms. I'm hoping it will help me with my older children who have a hard time with Spelling also.

First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind - for English grammar

Math-U-See - for math (of course). This has also been used very successfully in public school special ed. classrooms. This curriculum focuses on making sure that the student understands WHY math operates as it does. It's the difference between memorizing a formula or understanding what you are doing and why so you can create your own formula. Of course at his age, we'll be focusing on understanding place value, counting, and adding.

Science - this will be my own making. I will do a Charlotte Mason style study of science for him with lots of living books.

History - I make my own history curriculum using a variety of sources for all of my kids 8th grade and under, so he will be sitting in with us on our lessons this year. We will be studying American History again. I have LOTS of books that we will be reading, we will study a short history on all 50 states while spending extra time on Georgia our home state, and we will be learning more about our nations forefather's and their beliefs, and how it shaped our history.

Every year, I'm amazed at how much *I* learn by homeschooling my children. Already, I've learned a lot. I love homeschooling:)

And I have Josh to thank for all of this new found knowledge and excitement. Thank you Josh. I love you my dear son! We're going to have a great year together.

The Dangers of Public Schools

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:58:00 -0500

I'm baaack! I had decided to stop using homeschool blogger, but I've changed my mind. Much of my posts on my other website have to do with homeschooling, but I don't always talk freely there because I have family members who take my anti-public school stance personal. But if I feel strongly about a topic...no amount of personal offense will stop me from voicing what I believe. However, in the interest of perhaps blogging something that other's of like minds might enjoy (probably not...but just in case) I'll post some more on here.

Here is a my most recent post from my other website addressing the anti-homeschooling rhetoric on the website teacherrevised.org.

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Recently I found a website that was apparently intended for public school teachers to post articles about topics they deem relevant. I was quite surprised to read one person's "rant" about why he didn't believe in homeschooling. He had a degree in journalism, so many of the home school families were quite disappointed at how misinformed and unresearched his "reasons" were.

He began his article by calling home school moms "self aggrandizing, society phobic mothers". It only got better from there. Later, after being bombarded by comments from home school parents who were shocked and angry at the audacity of his article, he somewhat tried to soften to the blow of these words by saying, he didn't mean this as harshly as it sounded...so take it with a proverbial grain of salt.

Just a few of his (10) reasons are:

1. College kids use the term, "You were totally homeschooled" as an insult.

(The interesting thing about this "reason" was that it was implied that PUBLIC schooled kids would be doing the insults. He also pointed out that one could be taunted with this irregardless of whether they were *actually* home schooled. What he failed to realize...this would be a sign of BAD socialization skills in the real world. We don't go around randomly insulting people in the real world. He also failed to notice that going to a public school would not prevent this either. Apparently, our kids could possibly have this insult thrown at them, irregardless of whether they home or public schooled...so what's the point of sending them to a public school again?)

2. Homeschool parents are "selfish" because we are not sending our kids to the public school to help the not so smart kids there.

(I thought this was an insult to public schooled kids personally. I think there are some brilliant children in the public school system and it's sad that he wants to encourage such peer dependence. I also fail to understand how sending a smart kid to school will make another kid smarter anyhow. His argument made NO sense what-so-ever. I've paid local taxes all of my adult life...most of which goes to the public schools. My kids do not directly benefit from this at all. Plus, by me teaching my kids at home, that is 7 less kids in the classroom...making the classrooms smaller and allowing the teacher to focus on the other students. So in actuality, I've been selfless since I've taken the burden of educating my children off the system, thereby reducing teacher/student ratio and do not partake of the resources that we help pay for.)

3. As a teacher, it just makes him angry (except he didn't use that word).

(Well, there's a good reason to send our kids to a public school....it just makes him angry.)

4. There was no way a regular parent could teach as well as him.

(This one was funny. He had a double major in English and Journalism, and yet multiple home school parents pointed out grammatical errors. Note: Not me! Whereas, I can do a good job of editing my grammar mistakes, I don't usually bother. So I cast no stones on this one, lol. However, other's obviously felt that he needed to have it pointed out, so as to prove their point...they CAN educate their kids as well as he can. His point was even if we could teach English as well as him, we can't be an expert in every subject. Well, the problem with this way of thinking is that we don't HAVE to be an expert in all of these subjects. We have to have access to good curriculum, be willing to learn WITH the child, or hire tutors for our kids. Problem solved.)

He went on and on with such things, ending with this last reason...."not to hate, but homeschoolers are kind of geeky".

Well there's a reason to send our kids to public school.

As a Christian, I take that "geeky" name and wear it with pride. We are called to be different. Titus 2:14 and I Peter 2:9 calls us a "peculiar" people. That New Testament word for peculiar is periousios and is actually a compound of two Greek words that means "being beyond usual, that is, special (one's own). "Peculiar", I think, is this mans word, "geeky". I've told my children for years that they are not supposed to be able to "fit in" with most kids. If they went to a public school, private school, home school co-op, or even church, it's rare that they completely fit in. If they act just like the kids cursing at the home school co-op or, disrespecting their parents, disrespectful towards things to do with God, or in one case making out at co-op, then we have failed and we need to come up with a new plan fast (and pray that it's not too late for US to influence our children for Christ. Our influence as a parent rarely ever "stops" but it certainly slows down as our children get older).

After being swamped with angry homeschooler's comments, (according to him there were over 25,000 words posted in the comments section in one day) he's now decided homeschoolers are the "Kenyans" of filibusters and if he were ever in a fight he'd want us on his side, lol.

His next post was titled, "Homeschoolers: Do they care too much?".

This time his list was even worse...because it revealed the real danger that I see in the public school "system" (not necessarily the teachers, or at least not all of them, or even the principal but as an organization).

This time he pointed out that he thought it was dangerous for our kids to get all of their information from one source because then no one would be there to challenge that information. He equated this to "brainwashing". In other words, he's telling us that part of the public schools "job" is to make sure that the things you teach your kids is being challenged. According to him, part is to counteract people's religion and morality.

Let me quote:

This sort of attitude toward the vast majority of mainstream society worries me if it comes just from a parent. But since this comes from the two major authority figures in a child?s life?both parent and teacher? I?m downright terrified myself. How will the child come to learn any different?

Do you think abortion is wrong? It's the PS's job to counteract that belief according to this author.

Do you think homosexuality is wrong? It's the PS's job to teach your kids otherwise (and he specifically mentioned "sexuality" as one of those beliefs that public schools help to counter...but that seems to have disappeared from the original post now.) Again, according to this author, it's the PS's job to teach differently.

Do you have ANY moral that is different than mainstream, liberal America? If you do, then a public school would be the place to ensure that your belief system is not passed on to your child.

I loved my son's public school teacher this year. She was very sweet and she truly loved my son! How can I NOT love someone who so clearly loved my child? But at the end of the year, he was struggling and I was given a choice. I can either keep him in Kindergarten so he can learn to read but the math will be too easy for him....or I can send him on to first grade, where he will be left behind in reading...but he'll get the math he needs. I was to choose between math and reading.

No thanks. This society phobic, self-aggrandizing, selfish home school mom will keep her son at home next year, so I won't have to choose between learning to read and learning to add.

My new blog...

Mon, 1 Sep 2008 00:32:00 -0500

Just wanted to invite other's to my new blog if you are interested:)

www.becomingaruby.blogspot.com

Simple living...

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:58:00 -0500

I just love this new blog I found! I've only read a little bit of it but I like it already. It's intentions seem to be to encourage homemakers. I can use all of the encouragment that I can get. Hope this is as encouraging to you as it was to me!

HomeMAKING~More Than Dishes and Laundry!

Bible memory for preschoolers

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 19:32:00 -0500

I've spent a lot of time searching for a free list of Bible Memory verses on the internet for preschool or young children. I finally gave up. I figured that I could probably come up with my own list in less time than what it is taking for me to find a free list. So that's what I've done. If you'd like a copy of my verse list for preschoolers, you are welcome to them. I can't figure out how to upload a document to this website, so I've put them on my family webpage. You can download them from Michelle's Family.

School has began

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:32:00 -0500

This year, I've decided to start things out a little different than normal. We usually start school back the first Monday after Labor Day. This year, we started the day Mando started, however, we are easing into it. After Mando leaves, we finish breakfast and hygiene. Then we start with Bible. We do our bible study and devotions. I'm using Kids4Truth as a guide for our Bible, and I've been taking our devotion from Oswald Chamber's, My Utmost for His Highhest. I'm thinking I will probably switch different devotionals throughout the year. I like Keys For Kids a lot also. Sometimes we do the online devotion, and sometimes we read a written one from one of our KFK devotion books. Sometimes, I just read a Proverb or Psalm. I'll mix that it up throughout the year.

After Bible, I am doing History with Sarah, Timothy and Stephen. All of them are really enjoying this alot so far. We're using Time Travellers History, New World Explorers right now. We will study American History all year long, using other history topics from the same company.

That was all we did for the first 3 days last week. This week, I have added math to Stephen's day, and Explode the Code to Sarah and Timothy's day. Oh, and Timothy is having to complete LAST years math. He thought he had gotten by with it, but WAHAHAHA, WAAAHAHAHAHA (my evil laugh), he did not. He's very upset that he doesn't get to start his Saxon 5/4 WITH a d.i.v.e. cd yet. I'm not sympathetic. That's part of my evil side. No sympathy.

Still working on my schedule and calendar.

Developing a Homeschool Schedule

Sat, 9 Aug 2008 16:28:00 -0500

Okay, I just can't seem to get motivated to tackle what feels like an unsurmountable task of scheduling my 7 kids schedule and my own this year. I know part of it is going from 4 kids to 7 but that is not the only issue. I need some "how to" help from someone who is in the trenches with a houseful of kids. I already have the MOTH thing, and it is very tedious, and somewhat overwhelming. It's a great thought, just not for me. I WISH they had a MOTH type system that was computerized....so you could enter your activity, it's length and just move it around in the computer program till you like what you see. Hmmmm. Maybe I should suggest this to the Maxwell's. Or maybe I should develop my own program. Nah...who am I kidding? If I can't find time to schedule my own families lives, when would I find time to do that?!

Any ideas?

School and life

Sun, 6 Jul 2008 18:20:00 -0500

I've just finished reading a very small book that Michael is to read next year for American Literature. It was the Narritive of the Life of Frederick Douglass and I highly recommend it. It was short and truly this man was one of the smartest men I've ever read behind I think. Frederick Douglass was born a slave and this book chronicles his life as a slave and how he came to be a free man. I was fascinated by both his eloquence, writing with clarity that I find rare today, and his human insight. As a slave, he was able to understand much about his slaveholders that I would think would be difficult. Often I have thought that some "black" people are paranoid about "white" people's intentions. Reading this book has helped me to understand better WHY African Americans sometimes seem this way to me. It also went a long way to giving me another view of slavery that I haven't heard before. I especially found the appendix interesting, where Douglass felt compelled to comment on his views of religion, specifically Christianity. He felt that his tone in the book made him seem anti-Christianity which he was not. He was anti-slaveholder's religion. He was against the minister who sold a slave baby to give money to missionaries. He was against prostituting slave women so they could birth more slaves for the slave holders. I agreed with him completely. As thin as this book is (only 69 pages), it still took me a month to read it. It would seem reading with 7 kids is nearly impossible for a slow reader. I love to read and had hoped to read all of Michael's lit books this summer to screen them for appropriateness, but I think I will just have to trust the author of the American History/literature curriculum that I bought for next school year.

The kids are doing fine. I have YET to finish getting next year's curriculum for them. I've GOT to finish that this week. I hate waiting till the last minute. For 10 years I had all of their curriuculum purchased for the next school year, in the spring BEFORE the current school year was done. But last year and this one I have not been able to do this. What's changed? I became a foster parent, which has made more demands on my time than in the past. So...I'm still working on it. I'm really excited about the kids history for next year...all of their's. I've learned to LOVE history. Why does public schools work so hard to make it sooooo boring, reducing it to dates and battles, when history is so full of fascinating people and stories? I'm completely baffled by that.

BIG NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have 3 foster kids in our home that we may be adopting. They are absolutely wonderful, beautiful, precious children. If you'd like to know more about our story, please go to our home website. www.freewebs.com/michellenet