Book Buddies

So, Collin's school has Book Buddies. Yes, he is virtual school but this is Mrs Huiet and she came to our local library to have some time with the kids. If we include little Ryanne then we had K-4th grade represented in this group. ;) My kids thought it was awesome!! She read some books and then talked about some of the things the kids have been learning in the reading class and applied it to the book. It was fun!!!

S.E.E.D.

Science Education Enrichment Day... yeap, Collin was in heaven. We started off learning about neurons and Collin built one out of pipe cleaners. Then we moved on to glass blowing. This was exciting b/c Collin had learned about it in history when studying Italy.

Then we learned about minerals and the kids had to name a mineral to get a dum-dum. Then we moved on to the animals.

There's a little turtle!! There were a couple of them. :)

A snake wrapped around the light bulb.

A hawk. The kids couldn't touch the birds but they had the parts of a bird sitting around the table for the kids to touch. Kinda creepy if you think about it too hard but the kids enjoyed it.

Here's the owl. There were also owl pellets for the kids to dissect if desired. We didn't b/c Collin had an appointment in the Planetarium.

So, on to the planetarium for a show went Collin and me.

After the show we headed off to the quad where we found a truck that ran on water and a very exciting demonstration of levers.

Collin got to pull the pin and throw the tennis ball with the catapult.

It's hard to see but in the distance is a little boy with a red jacket on. That's Collin getting the tennis ball. It actually went pretty far.

The kids learned what to do if I was choking... do you see how hard Collin had to hit to get that gumball out of "my" throat. Oh my... I think that would have hurt. LOL! Ronni tried it too and the ladies teaching it had to help her get the hotdog out.

Time to make some paper!! Here's the pulp!

No, those aren't pancakes. That's round paper... they were cooking out the water. ;)

We did many other things but there were so many ppl that it was just hard to get the camera out everywhere. It was a fun day. Then, we went out for ice cream to make the day even better. Oh yeah!! :)

Colonial Times

So, we went on a field trip today and I'm exhausted. It went from 9am-1pm. Okay, so we left at about 12:50 but then we had to walk all the way back to the van so, yeah... it was pretty much 1. It was geared to kids a "little" older than Collin so I was surprised they lasted that long. It was tons of fun though!! Enjoy our adventures.....

This was George Washington. He was telling the kids all about his "adventures". He kind of lost my kids attention after ten minutes or so so we moved on to the guns... :)

This was one of Collin's favorite ones. This man explained step by step how the guns worked and he had samples of the barrels sliced open so Collin could see it all inside. He even fired the gun! Ryanne wasn't a fan of the loud noise so she and I went next door to the yarn spinner instead while Collin finished learning about guns, tomahawks, knives and swords.

Collin just looked so serious; I had to get a picture of him.

This was the arrogant French-man. He made lace and he was hilarious!! He was so haughty (an act) so it was just funny.

This is the Frenchman's wife. Ryanne thought that her dress was so pretty she wanted a picture with her.

This was the circus and the part that my kids spoke about most. This was one of those eye illusion things. He did some magic tricks and showed the comb of Medusa, a tooth from the whale who swallowed Jonah and some other things. Then... he moved on to the fire....

This was funny. He said, "Do you want to see me shove this lighted baton in my wife's mouth?" The kids all yelled, "Yeah!!" So, he did. hehe! ;)

He really did it for the kids though. He lit his tongue on fire and lit another baton with that flame. Fun! His finale was when he blew fire from his mouth. He made all the kids stand back. It was awesome!

Lunch

Finishing up lunch.

The kids watching the little creek that ran by where we had our picnic.

The wood carver.

Stockades. Neither of my kids were tall enough to reach so I could take a picture so Collin is lifting his sister into it. LOL! It was the best we could do. ;)

Toymaker!! My kids were here for a while.

More toymaker...

Still at the toymaker....

We just needed to get that stinkin' ball into the cup so we could move on from the toymaker's. Collin finally did so on we went.

The Indian Trader... no, he didn't trade Indians. I meant that he traded goods with the Indians. The follow pics of some of the stuff from his tent. In the picture above he was demonstrating how to make fire w/o a match.

The Blacksmith

Collin kept trying to get closer to the orange part. Freaked me out. We finally just left that building and went on to safer places.

This was a soldier showing us the food rations the men in the army were given. The ones on the floor were for the regular army men (rice, split peas, dried meat, vinegar, rum, and flour) and the ones on the table (which looked yummy-- chicken, fruit, cheese, pickles) was for the officers.

By the time we got to this part Ryanne was so tired she was cranky and yelling and crying about everything. Collin wanted to see so we quickly walked to other booths and looked to see who was there and then moved on to make a trip to the "Doctor Who Potties" (as the kids called them) or port-a-potties and then to the van. So, not pictured but also there were Indians, Benjamin Franklin, a leather builder person, a lady with information on tea, a woman doing those silhouette portraits ($20 each if you wanted one of you) and a few others that we just didn't make it to. Tons of fun!! :)

Update on virtual school

The kids have been loving it!! Ronni participates in a lot of the classes. Collin gets 3 live virtual class each week. He has reading and math and then science and social studies alternate each week. He also just got his IEP and now gets two speech sessions with the school and one through private so, yes, he gets 3 speech sessions/week. On top of all that he has math, language arts and phonics lessons daily. Then he has art, history, science, and music which alternate; he has 2 lessons of each one/week. Ronni loves to participate... especially on the projects. He just had his monthly assessment with his teacher to make sure he was where he was supposed to be. We skipped the first 8 units of math b/c Collin already knew them. That equaled 16 weeks worth of work. So, she tested him on that to make sure he understood everything he skipped. He did!! She was shocked and bubbly when she realized that. At the rate he's going he should be moving up to first grade math in January. He is also reading and building words now. It's awesome. He got to start his first reader book today. Hooray!!

Ronni and I have been working on number recognition lately. She can count to 12 but she doesn't know what the numbers look like so that has been fun! :) It's not as fun for her as it was for Collin so our sessions are much shorter for her. She's only 3 so I don't want to teach the fun of learning out of her. We make it fun and when she's tired we do something else.

Here are some pictures of a few of our projects.
These are from history....

When studying the Netherlands we built a dike. The water is on the right side of the dike.

Then we built a canal to go with the dike.

This is Collin's diorama of The Great Reef off the coast of Australia from when we studied Australia. ;)

The following are science:

We've been studying plants and how they get nutrition so, of course, we had to do this classic science experiment. We ended up with a blue and red daisy. :)

This was when we were working on senses. This day we were focusing on the sense of taste. I blindfolded the kids and they had to tell me if things were salty, sweet or sour. It was fun!! Especially when I gave them the lime. LOL! :) It took a lot of trust on their part.

Collin pouring white vinegar into a jar.

Ronni placing a chicken bone into the jar.

Two weeks later - Collin demonstrating what happens when calcium is sucked out of the bone. (Obviously, this was when we were learning about the body and on the topic of bones.)

What do you think? I know that not everyone believes in the same God or has the same faith but most people believe in SOMETHING (not everyone, I know). What do you think of the idea of gathering together at the flagpole at school and together asking, whoever you feel is in charge, in a united voice for help. They don't allow this IN the schools but will they tolerate it outside the schools? It probably depends on where you live too. Here, in the Bible Belt, I think most of the teachers would just ignore it but in other places it may cause problems. It will be interesting to see what will happen.

The Bitter Homeschooler's Wishlist

by Deborah Markus, from Secular Homeschooling, Issue #1, Fall 2007
1 Please stop asking us if it's legal. If it is — and it is — it's insulting to imply that we're criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it?
2 Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you're talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we've got a decent grasp of both concepts.
3 Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.
4 Don't assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.
5 If that homeschooler you know is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a "reality" show, the above goes double.
6 Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling. You're probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you've ever heard. We all hate you, so please go away.
7 We don't look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they're in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we're doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.
8 Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious.
9 Stop assuming that if we're religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.
10 We didn't go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions.
11 Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials. I didn't have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family; I don't need a degree in teaching to educate my children. If spending at least twelve years in the kind of chew-it-up-and-spit-it-out educational facility we call public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can't teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there's a reason I'm so reluctant to send my child to school.
12 If my kid's only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he'd learn in school, please understand that you're calling me an idiot. Don't act shocked if I decide to respond in kind.
13 Stop assuming that because the word "home" is right there in "homeschool," we never leave the house. We're the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it's crowded and icky.
14 Stop assuming that because the word "school" is right there in homeschool, we must sit around at a desk for six or eight hours every day, just like your kid does. Even if we're into the "school" side of education — and many of us prefer a more organic approach — we can burn through a lot of material a lot more efficiently, because we don't have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator.
15 Stop asking, "But what about the Prom?" Even if the idea that my kid might not be able to indulge in a night of over-hyped, over-priced revelry was enough to break my heart, plenty of kids who do go to school don't get to go to the Prom. For all you know, I'm one of them. I might still be bitter about it. So go be shallow somewhere else.
16 Don't ask my kid if she wouldn't rather go to school unless you don't mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn't rather stay home and get some sleep now and then.
17 Stop saying, "Oh, I could never homeschool!" Even if you think it's some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you're horrified. One of these days, I won't bother disagreeing with you any more.
18 If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you're allowed to ask how we'll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can't, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn't possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one.
19 Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child's teacher as well as her parent. I don't see much difference between bossing my kid around academically and bossing him around the way I do about everything else.
20 Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentative, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he's homeschooled. It's not fair that all the kids who go to school can be as annoying as they want to without being branded as representative of anything but childhood.
21 Quit assuming that my kid must be some kind of prodigy because she's homeschooled.
22 Quit assuming that I must be some kind of prodigy because I homeschool my kids.
23 Quit assuming that I must be some kind of saint because I homeschool my kids.
24 Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won't get because they don't go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school.
25 Here's a thought: If you can't say something nice about homeschooling, shut up!

Everytime I watch this trailer I cry. When I watched the movie, I cried. It is such an amazing video (yes, it is biased but so is everything else). It follows several children as they work with their parents to find a better education and it's all based on luck. You also get a better look into the American schools and what the gov't is doing to try and improve the education system but the stupid politics that prevent them from doing anything. I definitely recommend watching it.