Homeschool Hacks

Bullying in the School System

Summer at Mom is Teaching wrote a brilliant article on bullying. Go read it!

From her article-

"I don’t want to teach my sons to deal with bullies. I want to teach them that this behavior is unacceptable, that hurting others in any way does not make them “cool”, that they don’t have to fit into the crowd and that standing out does not have to be painful, and that they do not have to become the kind of adults that use words that hurt as much as fists. They can be better. If that means keeping them out of the bully-rich environment until they have a solid foundation built up and a strong enough personal base to stand up to those who use power-over, then good. They will be strong er for it in the long run."

Is anyone tired of hearing how we should put our kids in school to socialize them? Middle School and High School are artificial environments that children are expected to 'get through'. It is ridiculous to feel we need to expose our children to this simply because most children are forced to deal with it! The school experience for most children has nothing to do with real-life in adulthood. I say we start laughing when we are asked, "What about socialization?" I say the proof is in the pudding, as my grandmother used to say.

Free Online Virtual Fieldtrips

I found a wonderful site with free virtual field trips!

Here is the list of all the topics-

Art Art Gallery Basilica of the National Shrine Byzantine Art Nobel e-Museum Sistine Chapel The Louvre Visit France! Fun Fireworks! Grades 4-12 Roller Coasters Online Whale Watching Geography Great Buildings Part 1 Great Buildings Part 2 Oregon Trail Virtual Antarctica: Glacier Invitation History American Presidents Ancient Egypt British Monarchy Deep Undercover! The FBI Gold Rush The Pentagon The Pentagon 2 The White House Titanic World War II Literature American Sign Language Treasure Island William Shakespeare Math Bureau of Engraving and Printing Mathematics! Music MIDI Classical Music Symphony for Kids! Western Composers Science Aeronautics Learning Laboratory Anatomy and Physiology Benjamin Franklin Forces and Weather! How Stuff Works! - Email and The Internet National Zoo Oceans Alive Sea Lions The Inside Story Submarines! Secrets and Spies!! The Human Body!

If you need me, I'll be playing on this site for the rest of the day! The boys can play learn tomorrow!

Learning While Having Fun Outside

As the weather warms up and the world begins to bloom homeschooling parents begin to rejoice. Kids that have been cooped up inside all winter can finally burst free outside and enjoy some much needed sunshine. If you want to add a little education to their rolling in the flowers here are some ideas to explore. Perfect for a warm Spring day.

• Join in the Green Hour Challenge with your kids
• Get them stared on their own Nature Journal
• Give them some seeds and help your kids start gardening
• Let them share all those wiggly bugs they find with some insect collecting
• See if they can come up with some ways to invite wildlife right into your backyard

Hopefully these ideas will inspire you and excite your kids to learn something about nature while out there enjoying it.

Read more excellent articles from Summer at Wired For Noise & Mom is Teaching.

Make a Flapbook Lapbook Video

I never thought of making a flapbook for the younger kids. Super cute!

Fun Weekend Activities

How to garden with the kids.(Parenting.com)

How to plant hanging upside down tomato plants.(Instructables.com)

Great ideas for displaying your kid's artwork.(Parents.com)

Wonderful St. Patrick's Day activities.(familyfun.com)

Tidal Learning Tuesday -Strategic Strewing

Welcome to the third installment of Tidal Learning Tuesday. The most wonderful Melissa Wiley originally posted this article in January 2005 and she has so graciously allowed me to republish.

I consider my primary function as a homeschooling mom to be Strategic Strewing of the Path. Coined by Sandra Dodd, "strewing" is a favorite term of homeschoolers, especially unschoolers, which describes the habit of oh-so-subtlely leaving books lying on tables and counters and in the car where unsuspecting children will find them. (Check out Sandra’s extensive page on strewing here.)

I learned the benefits of strewing from my husband. He hates to be told what to read. In high school, his favorite books were the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He read and re-read them for pleasure year after year. In college, he took a class on Tolkien. A certain number of chapters of The Lord of the Rings was assigned for each class. And Scott found that he never wanted to read the material. It had become "material." It was an assignment, chopped up into increments and parceled out over a semester. He procrastinated or completely blew off the daily reading assignments. At home the following summer, he lounged under the air conditioner and read the whole trilogy for pleasure.

He told me that story early in our relationship, and I’m glad, because it tipped me off to the fact that if I really want him to read something, I shouldn’t ask him to. Instead, if I have a book I’m dying to share with him, I leave it in the bathroom and take all other reading material out of there. That’s strategic strewing.

It works with my children, too. I know their interests. I know where they like to hang out in the house. So I choose books I think will capture my 9-year-old’s imagination and leave them on the windowsill beside her chair at the lunch table, or on the sofa where she likes to sprawl. I leave baskets of books all over the house; I casually lay a picture book or two on my 4-year-old’s nightstand when I’m putting her down for a nap. I sneak into my sleeping daughters’ room and put books at the foot of their bed, because I know that when they wake up they’ll find them and look at them and maybe I’ll get to sleep ten minutes past dawn the next morning.

I have to be careful, because sometimes this gets me in trouble. Two summers ago I wanted to know what was growing in our unlandscaped side yard, so I checked a book on weeds out of the library. I glanced at it but decided this book was too dry to make it worth the effort and tossed it onto the kitchen table. The next day I returned it to the library. The next day, then-7-year-old Jane summoned me with an anguished wail. "Mommy, where’s that great book I was reading? The one about weeds? It was SO interesting!" She’d found it lying on the table and naturally assumed that it was meant for her. I admitted I’d returned it, and she was crushed. I had to promise to schedule a special trip to re-check it out. Apparently what is one person’s giant yawn is another person’s heart-pounder.

Scatter enough books in their paths, and they’ll find the heart-pounders for themselves."

Read more of Melissa's inspirational posts at  Here in the Bonny Glen.

Video- Animal School

Animal school is a classic. I wanted to share it today while I am reeling from the dangerous ruling in CA. My prayers are with the families who will be affected.

CA Homeschoolers in danger

From the AP-

Court: Credential Needed to Home School

7 hours ago

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California parents without teaching credentials cannot legally home school their children, according to a recent state appellate court ruling.

The immediate impact of the ruling was not clear. Attorneys for the state Department of Education were reviewing the ruling, and home schooling organizations were lining up against it.

"Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote in a Feb. 28 opinion for the 2nd District Court of Appeal.

Noncompliance could lead to criminal complaints against the parents, Croskey said.

An estimated 166,000 students in California are home schooled, but it was not known how many of them are taught solely by an uncredentialed parent.

To earn a five-year preliminary teaching credential in California, a person must obtain a bachelor's degree and complete multiple examinations.

Until now, California allowed home schooling if parents filed paperwork to establish themselves as small, private schools; hired a credentialed tutor; or enrolled their child in an independent study program run by an established school while teaching the child at home.

The ruling stems from a case involving a Los Angeles-area couple whose eldest child reported "physical and emotional mistreatment" by the father, court papers said.

The father, Phillip Long, vowed to take the case to the state Supreme Court.

"I have sincerely held religious beliefs," he told the Los Angeles Times. "Public schools conflict with that. I have to go with what my conscience requires me."

More developing....

Hackers Love Bravewriter

I can not say enough wonderful things about Julie Bogart at Bravewriter.com.

Here is a brief intro from her site-

"Kids are tremendously interesting people, even the ones who write poorly. My goal is to help you do your job—to draw out the mind life of your child so that you can capture those precious thoughts in writing. What's on paper ought to be a fair and insightful representation of all that goes on in your kids' busy heads. And when it is, you and your young writers will love the results.

That, in a nutshell, is why Brave Writer exists.

Self-expression in written form should not be so infuriatingly difficult to teach. But it is for most of us. We have to learn what writing isn't before we can teach what it is."

If you have not yet fallen in love with Bravewriter, get ready to thank me!

Need a laugh?

Is your three year old jumping on the couch while you try to teach division?

Click here for a little doggie distraction!