Things Homeschooling has Given to Me -by my daughter

My daughter Ashley posted this on facebook the other day and I thought it was perfect for our homeschool blog! She is 15.

Things Homeschooling Has Given to ME

1.The best friends anyone could ask for.

2. Testing doesn't determine how intelligent you are, it determines how much you've learned. Missing questions on a test does not mean you are a failure.

3. You can buy a machine to turn your boiled eggs into squares. Square eggs. Win.

4. Chemistry is fun. No, really.

5. Roosters don't have the expected male extremity.

6. My parents may just understand me. Maybe.

7. A closer relationship with God. To be Christian is to love God with reckless abandon.

8. An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.

9. Think before you speak, but never hold in something that is important to you.

10. Never judge. Never lose friends based on religion,politics,or disagreeing opinions, even if if they like pinapple on their pizza or eat things with high fructose corn syrup. [;

11. Life is too short not to live.

12. Never hold back from telling someone you love that you love them.

13. "No homo" is quite possibly the dumbest phrase in history.

14. Every girl needs a gay best friend.

15. Listen to the music you like, watch the movies you like, read the books you like. Don't pretend not to like something because it isn't cool.... or vice versa.

16. Pokémon is one of the most addictive games ever.

17. Science is amazing. Stay curious.

18. The Discovery Channel is the best channel ever. There's nothing like spending all day watching a Mythbuster's marathon. The world is just fawesome.

19.There are aliens out there, and you know it.

20. Jesus died for your sins, but that doesn't mean you get to keep sinning. Always do what you think is right. That's all anyone can ask of you.

21. Daytime TV is the worst thing ever. Always keep a stack of DVD's around.

22. Don't be a hater. Let others do what they love, and they'll let you do what you love.

23. Be yourself. The ones who mind don't matter, and the ones matter don't mind.

24. Friends are like potatoes. If you eat them, they die.

25. Large world/national maps make for great dinnertime conversation. Hang them in your dining room.

26. All natural blackberry soda is delicious. Thanks, Sami!

27. Manga/anime is fawesome.

28. You don't have to like someone's opinion, but always treat others with respect. Always use respect.

29. Cutting up dead animals is fun.

30. And finally, homeschooling gave me all of ya'll. And that's one of the best :]

Our plan for the new school year!

We have finally finished the 2009-2010 school year. It was a long year with several moves across the country. From NC to Or then to Va we drove and flew and drove some more! Our new school year will not begin till mid-Sept as we need a well deserved break! However, I have been planning out what we will study and am starting to organize all the books!

Ashley will be an 11th grader this year! Wow, how time flies. Although she would be a 10th grader in PS, she has enough credits for 11th grade. So her studies will be as follows:

History: World History- Streams of Civilization 1
Reading: British lit with LLATL
Voc: Wordly Wise 11
Grammar: Diagramming 1 &2, Easy Grammar 11
Writing: Writing Strands
Science: Apologia Physics
Math: Jacob's Geometry (she has finished Algebra 1 and 2, so we thought we would take a break
Spanish: continue with Rosetta Stone
Also, she will be finishing up a bowling PE credit and working on her Art through painting and charcoal.

Sara Beth will be doing 3rd grade. It is unclear what grade level her same-aged peers would be in due to birthday cut-offs...either 1st or 2nd.

Sonlight Core 3 will be our main course. She will be doing Reading, American History, Language Arts and Science with Sonlight.
Math: Singapore 3A and 3B.
Vocabulary: Wordly Wise 3
Spelling: Sequential Spelling
Spanish: some store bought Spanish books

I am getting excited to start Sonlight. I have heard great things about it and it looks awesome!

Our local homeschool group is doing a not-back-to-school picnic the end of August. The following week we are visiting my mother in law for her bday and then we will slowly get back into the swing of things! Hopefully we can fit in some hiking, some lake swimming and other activities before we start back up!

Free PE for US

One of the hardest things I find with homeschooling is finding great activities for free or cheap. Most things we want to do cost money, such as art lessons, dance lessons, PE classes. This summer I learned about a great program that is free to all children! kidsbowlfree.com! You sign up your children and each week you receive coupons for them to bowl 2 free games everyday! The only downside is the cost of bowling shoes, but for $50 total we bought a pair for each of the girls. For an addition $25, you can sign up 4 adults too. So, I get to bowl with them, and of course I already have my own shoes!

Another bonus is Ashley has a website that has links for free high school online courses. Of them them is a bowling course! WE signed up and now she has a pe credit for her transcripts! Score! We have been going once a week mostly, but sometimes we go twice. Even dad joined us one week, although he did not like the bumpers that we use for the kids.

Sara Beth seems to add on the bowling with dancing. She dances and bowls the whole time! She is a riot! And other bowlers will watch her too!

Our Dining Room Learning Room

After 2 moves, we are finally getting our learning room together. It is in no way complete, but a work in progress. We find that the girls seem to do all their work at the dining room table, so might as well put everything in there! First, we have our shelves that contain all the books for what the girls are studying. Right now we actually have this years and some of next years curriculum on the shelves. We also have the pens, pencils, crayons, etc on these shelves, but I would like to find a small set of cheap shelves to put those items on. As you can tell, it is a little messy as we have new stuff and old stuff that needs to be gone through!


I recently purchased this dry erase board for $5! It was a great deal and the girls love it. Ashley likes to write out her chemistry problems and Sara Beth likes to do math on it and draw pictures on it. The file cabinet I scored off a swap board! And we really needed one to house years past records and other household records.

A couple of weeks ago I scored these 2 large laminated maps for $12 at Growing Scholars in Indian Trail, NC. We love looking at them at all times. Even at dinner you can catch someone just staring at them looking for a place. Brian likes to walk over and just check them out. The other day Sara Beth had read a vocabulary passage about Thailand and went over to the map to try and find it!

We also have a poster of all the presidents and the periodic table. Ashley needed the table for Chemistry and I though it would be good for all of us to know the presidents! It has some great trivia on the back that I plan on photocopying and hanging under the poster.

Hopefully we will finish up this school year soon and get a break so I can straighten up the shelves and get everything organized for next year. We plan to take 4-6 weeks off to just relax!

Reasons Why I Homeschool

Lately, I have been thinking about all the wonderful reasons for why I home school and wanted to put it in writing. This is not a complete list, as I hope to keep adding to it!

1. I love being with my children. I love having them near!
2. No parent teacher conferences!
3. No homework...we already do all our work at home!
4. No buying trendy new clothes for school...we usually do schoolwork in our pjs!
5. PE is bowling. or badminton. or hiking.
6. Field trips in which my children actually learn something. We can go when we want, to where we went and actually take our time there and learn!
7. I was there when my child learned to read. I was the one to hear her read her first word, her first sentence, her first book!
8. No teaching to the test! The only time we think about yearly testing is during the test. They always test well without me having to teach what I think will be on the test.
9. I love it when we are reading something and a topic comes up that interests my children. At that very moment we are able to abandon what we are doing and go research more about that topic! No waiting until later when we have forgotten about it or lost interest!
10. Child directed learning! The other day while doing multi digit subtraction with one column regrouping, Sara Beth wanted to know what would happen if 2 digits on the top had to be regrouped. Instead of telling her that one day we will learn that, I was able to go with it and teach her 2 digit regrouping! And she was so excited!
11. When my child takes a test she discovers within minutes how she did.
12. Watching my children's love of learning grow! After reading a chapter in Ramona Quimby to Sara Beth, she decided to read 2 more chapters on her own! And so went the rest of the book! Her first chapter book at age 6!
13. My children are able to socialize (YES! The big S word!) with people of all ages! They can carry on a conversation with adults as well as with children. They play with kids of all ages during "recess".
14. My children help me pick out their curriculum. I give them options and they choose what they believe is the best way to learn it. They are the ones who have to do it, after all!
15. Vacations at any time of the year. We can school during the hot, sticky summer months and vacation in September when the weather has cooled off just enough to do all the fun summer things!
16. My children have a pretty good relationship. They are with each other much more than most other siblings and they seem to do better at getting along. ( I should know...I had 3 brothers and we were always trying to kill each other!)

I know there are many more reasons! Leave a comment and share your reasons on why you home school! I would love to here them.

Summer School still

We are still doing summer school, although we are going at a slow pace. Sara Beth is 1 1/2 lessons from being done in reading. She is working through a math workbook that is end of 1st grade so she is prepared for her new math curriculum which is more advanced than her 1st grade math program.

Ashley is working hard finishing up math and S.S. Her marine biology is going, but she started that midyear and I don't expect it done immediately. She finally finished a book she needed to read and get moving in her American History.

Both girls are excited about their news books for next year. But, they are also looking forward to some time off. We plan to take off Sept, and whatever they will have left in August once they are done.

Summer School

We got a little behind these past 2 months, so we will be working into the summer. Ashley still has quite a bit of work in Marine Biology, algebra and American History. Sara Beth only has 5 lessons left in reading, but much more in math.

We are debating on changing her math for next year. Saxon moves to slow for her, so we are debating on switching to Horizons math. So, we will work on Horizons 1, book 2 for the next 2 months and then in the fall go into Horizons 2.

Ashley wants to stay with Saxon math for Algebra 2. She will continue with Apologia in Chemistry next year. Both girls may go to LLATL for next year. Still not 100% sure yet! Too much to think about!

Dogfish Shark dissection

Ashley got to do her biggest dissection yet! A dogfish shark...and oh did it stink! The whole house stunk for a few hours! She enjoyed identifying all the parts of the shark and taking it apart piece by piece. I can tell she really learned a lot from her reading as she got excited about each organ she found and the food she found in the stomache! Yes...really gross!

Clam Dissection...cont.

Ashley finally got to do the dissection of the clam. Unfortunately, the clam was a little old and once when finally pried it open, we found it a little dried out. She was still able to identify most of the parts. I told her we can go to the grocery store and get a fresh one...although I think it is kind of gross. Here are some pics from her dissection.

Disecting a clam

Today my daughter, Ashley, told me I am no fun. Why you ask? Because she is going to disect a clam and I told her I plan on leaving the room for that one. Now, clams are not that gross, it is just the smell of dead organisms,,,ugghhh. My house stunk for days after the frog disection! I have to remind her that it is her who plans to be a scientist, not me! I will have to get her to take some pics and I will post another time!

Time Does Fly

WoW! I forgot I even had this blog. We were really busy trying to get everything done in one day! It is over a year later and we are still homeschooling. Maybe a little more relaxed. Ashley is in 9th grade now and is doing well. She doesn't always get started early and sometimes doesn't finish till the evening, but she is busy doing other things during the day. She takes care of dogs for a neighbor and is saving hard for her own laptop. This year she is study American History and Lit, Algebra, Marine Biology, Latin roots for Science, Vocabulary, Grammar, Spanish 1 and bible. We haven't found a homeschool group that fits our needs this year, but I will be working harder to find one next month.

Sara Beth is doing 1st grade this year. She loved to read and do math. Sometimes on the weekend she wakes up and wants to know what schoolwork she has today. She can read just about anything. She is still doing Sing, spell, read write and loves it! Saxon for math, apologia for Astronomy, although we are taking science really slow! Ancient history is going slow as well.

March 2 we are heading to Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown for homeschool days. Ashley is studying this time period and Sara Beth will be learning same basic American History in Feb. We are looking forward to a great week there!

Busy, Busy, Busy

We seem to stay busy these days. All week we have been running around and trying to get all our school work in. Yesterday, Ashley wasn't done until 11:30 and then we had to run out for our park day with our homeschool group. We all need this weekly activity as it gives me tme to talk to other homeschoolers and the kids time to play with their friends. We stayed a good 4 hours again and Sara Beth needed a bath when we got home as she was covered in dirt. That shows she had a great time!

We are preparing for a science day for our group on Friday. We will be doing Physics Quest with the children. They are really looking forward to it. My "center" will be making and testing a pendulum. Other centers will be testing magnets, light and exploring bubbles. Each group needs to solve the problem to find Einstein on a map. It is really neat. This is from 2005. Each year they come out with a new Physics Quest and you can request one for free. We are waiting for the 2007 one to be shipped.

Today we will have a calm morning followed by a busy afternoon...what a shock! Sara Beth has gymnastics at 12:30. Then, since we are over by her eye doctor, we are turning in her older pair of glasses to have the lens replaced. After that we will hopefully get the car washed. It is still covered with dead love bugs from our trip to Disney 3 weeks ago and I am tired of looking at them. I would wash them off the car, but we are in a drought and there is no washing down of anything right now. So, off to pay a gafortune on a car wash. It will probably rain as I pull out out of the carwash, but at least we will get rain. As long as those love bugs are gone!

Apologia Biology...credit for high school?

The big question right now has to do with Ashley's new science course. We have decided to do Apologia biology. This is a high school level course and I believe if Ashley does well in it she should receive high school credit. The question is, can I do this? If I homeschool her through high school and write her transcripts, then I should be able to teach her high school courses when she is ready, not when the general population is ready to learn it, right? That is why we homeschool...to teach our children what they want to learn when they are ready.

Well, what if we do send her to public high school. Will they accept the credit? Or will they make her take the course over again? She is also going to start Algebra sometime during this school year. Again, a high school course that many students take in 8th grade and get hs credit for. So, she should get credit for it when she finishes it, whether it by 7th, 8th or 9th grade.

I am not trying to push her to finish high school too early, but she is gifted and wants to learn things that are beyond her assigned grade level. Actually, as I have been forging through this homeschool journey, I have began to feel that there is not realy grade levels for my children. Ashley is doing typical 8th grade math, reading high school reading material, completing 7/8th grade social studies and now doing 9th grade science. I should just label her a homeschooler and not a 7th grader.

So, I guess I will go ahead and start biology and pray she does well and keep really good records so we can try to get hs credit for it. I believe I need to go to a seminar on writing high school transcripts so I know what I am doing!

Our First Entry

Today we are starting late. It is already 8:30 and all of us are still in our pj's. Our week has started out slow.

Yesterday we went to a Symphony 101 class to learn about the symphony Peter and the Wolf. If was very interesting and Sara Beth, who is only 4, loved the piece and enjoyed trying to identify the characters by the mucisal instruments. Ashley, who is 12, felt as if she already had learned all of this and was entertained anyway.

We went to the park for a picnic and then stopped at the homeschool store for a new science curriculm. I broke the old one. ...woops, might have been intentional. We decided on Apologia Biology. Although this is really an 8/9th grade science, Ashley feels she can do it and wants to so we will see how that goes!

After shopping we stopped home and we had to run out to one of our homeschooling groups activities. We received our new handbook and a t-shirt and returned home.

On the way back into our neighborhood, Sara Beth wanted to know why we lived in Rocky River Crossing and there was no river. So, after dinner the whole family took a long walk to the trail by the river to show Sara Beth there is a river! Unfortunately, we are going through a really bad drought so the streams and creeks were dried up and the river was really low. We had fun and learned how much water we really need to conserve.

Well, it is off to learning and starting our day!