I'm part of The Homeschool Blog Awards gang, and I sometimes guest post over at The Homeschool Post. I've got a new post up today on some of my favourite online homeschooling helps!
That is all. Regular programming will resume shortly.
Just a quick thing for Works for Me Wednesday this week--
When I was in grade 9, my history teacher taught us how to write essays. She drilled it into our heads so much that we couldn't forget: thesis statement, three points, topic sentence for each, concluding sentence. She also drummed the proper way to write a book report into our heads, too. Don't retell the plot: analyze the book. I hated her with a passion. And now, looking back, she was my favourite teacher. She helped me immeasurably.
I've taken what she taught and turned it into outlines for book reports and essays that you can download for FREE here. They're great for grades 5-12. I use them in our homeschool, but even if your kids aren't homeschooled, if you want them to write awesome essays, or help them plan book reports, they'll be useful! Just pick them up here. (scroll down for the links).
Have a great day!
Thanks for dropping by! I have lots of other posts on marriage, parenting, finding our purpose, and more! Why not stay and look around a while?
Too many people believe that if you "shelter" kids, you're somehow dooming them to lives of geekdom and ignorance. Sheltering is seen as a cruel thing, done by strange, nerdy parents who are insecure about their offspring and scared that they will wander too far from the nest. The end result of this is often assumed to be either open rebellion on the part of children when they grow older or children growing into adults who just don't fit in.
Personally, I've never really understood this. After all, God shelters us. We shelter our plants from too much sun. What happens when you've got tomato seedlings and you want to plant them outside? You shelter them, planting them on a cloudy day, so that they aren't exposed to the rough world all at once. Sheltering is necessary there, and it's necessary and good with our children. It's how we care for them. If we don't shelter, we're just letting our society raise our kids. And honestly, would you trust our society to do that?
I think most people reading this blog are on the same page I am. Frankly, I'm not really sure why people who disagree with me would wander here, but obviously they do, as this comment from my post on watching television shows:
That's just stupid. Children are never innocent, only ignorant. Keeping them under glass bell will only make it harder for them to face reality when they get older and the bell is lifted and shattered. This world is cruel and your children should get the right informations from you before someone feeds them false ones. The bible as the source of the information is terribly out of date and out of touch with reality of the 21st century. Also, do you like making your daughter feel like idiot? Imagine her talking with other children and not having a clue about what are they talking about 'cause that's exactly what you're doing. Why do you want her to accomplish less in life than you? You were watching TV as a child, why are you not giving the same rights you had? You can control what she's watching, you know. As for home schooling: Why are you not giving her the same starting position that the other children have? Why do you think you know everything and are able to do the job as well as teachers that are trained and paid for it? Are you that proud not to see that you are not doing a favor to her, but to yourself, because ignorant child is easier to control? One day, your daughter will want to go to college and won't make it, because she will not have the same knowledge as the other people and it will be your fault for not providing it. I pray that God will bless you with wisdom to see the errors of your ways, but that's a very thin hope. Best wishes, Jon Snowing.
Where to start? Let's take it point by point:
Keeping them under glass bell will only make it harder for them to face reality when they get older and the bell is lifted and shattered.
Actually, those who are sheltered do better. Kids who are homeschooled, for instance, do better at university, score higher on standardized tests, do better socially, are happier, are more likely to have stable marriages when they grow up, are far less likely to commit suicide, are more likely to vote and volunteer, are more likely to hold a job and less likely to collect unemployment insurance, and in general are exactly the kind of citizens we want.
Last week a 15-year-old boy froze to death just a few hundred metres from my house in the woods. He had run away from home after being bullied at school, and didn't want to be forced to go back. School is like a jail for many kids. Forcing them to face a situation we would never put up with ourselves is cruel (not all schooling is like this, of course; but for this boy it was).
Also, my children are not ignorant. They know all about the facts of life. They have seen poverty firsthand on our trips to a Kenyan orphanage. They know about terrorism, about rape (they have seen 14-year-olds there with babies), about AIDS, and about alcoholism.
But there is a huge difference between knowing about sex and alcohol and watching it on television where it is presented in a positive light in situations which are definitely harmful. For an 8-year-old to be wanting a boyfriend because that's what she sees on television is just stupid. Television shows glorify a lifestyle which is wrong and harmful. I know you can pick and choose what your kids watch, but this commenter was replying to a post in which I specifically mentioned the show How I Met Your Mother. Why would you want your child watching that? I really don't get it.
Also, do you like making your daughter feel like idiot? Imagine her talking with other children and not having a clue about what are they talking about 'cause that's exactly what you're doing.
My daughter doesn't feel like an idiot. Most of her friends know she is extremely smart. They come to her asking her questions because she has such a rich and varied life that doesn't revolve around media.
Why do you want her to accomplish less in life than you?
I'm not even sure where this is coming from. My kids are accomplishing more because they don't watch television. They're both several grade levels ahead in school. We just signed my oldest up for online high school and she's doing grade 10 courses (she's the age of grade 8). They have numerous hobbies. They do a ton of sports. They have more time to pursue these things than I did. I wasted my whole childhood and much of my adulthood on TV. I only started writing and speaking (which is now my career) when I got rid of the box. Before then I had no time. How is taking away television limiting my kids? It's expanding their possibilities!
As for home schooling: Why are you not giving her the same starting position that the other children have? Why do you think you know everything and are able to do the job as well as teachers that are trained and paid for it? Are you that proud not to see that you are not doing a favor to her, but to yourself, because ignorant child is easier to control? One day, your daughter will want to go to college and won't make it, because she will not have the same knowledge as the other people and it will be your fault for not providing it.
This is just offensive and ignorant. My kids, as I have said, are grade levels ahead. Rebecca will be starting online university at age 15, and then will go to regular university later. Universities now give scholarships to homeschoolers, and Harvard is actively recruiting them (as is Wilfred Laurier in Canada) because homeschoolers do so well at university because they are self-starters. By the way, I'm more educated than 95% of teachers. And my husband is a doctor. I'm more qualified to teach them. But even if parents aren't educated, their homeschooled children still score higher on standardized tests.
I really didn't want this to become a post on homeschooling, because that's not what this blog is about. But the commenter brought it up (even in a post that had nothing to do with homeschooling).
I'm proud of my girls and thrilled with my life. They are more self-confident and well-rounded than I was at their age, and I went to school and watched television. Our society is sick. Why would you want it raising your kids? I feel sorry for people who don't get that, but I feel even sorrier for their children.
And for those of you who don't homeschool, you can still shelter your kids. You can still monitor the television (or get rid of it). You can spend more time as a family doing sports, reading books, or playing board games. You can get involved in their schools. Just don't let the media raise your kids, as this guy is suggesting. That's abdicating the most important job you will ever have. And it truly is a shame that so many parents do that.
I've been reading a blog called "Why Boys Fail" lately. It's just brilliant, and talks about many of the issues I write about in my column.
My husband is a pediatrician, and one of the things he absolutely hates is ADHD assessments. Often schools all and ask him to assess this child for educational problems or ADD.
One day I got thinking about this issue, and decided to run a query on our database. I searched for a diagnosis that had something to do with ADD, or learning disabilities, and then cross referenced it for the gender and month of birth of the child.
And lo and behold, those most likely to be sent for assessment for learning difficulties were boys born in the fall (in Canada your school year is determined by your birth year). Everybody wanted to medicate all these little boys who were born in November. Meanwhile, hardly any girls born in January or February were ever sent to him.
If ADD and learning disabilities were truly biological, then we would expect an even split across the year. But it's heavily weighted towards the fall, and it's heavily weighted towards boys.
It's schools that are the problem, not the boys.
Now I don't have any sons (except my little peanut in heaven!). But one day my daughters are going to have to find husbands, and it's in nobody's interests to have schools fail boys. Otherwise, what will these boys grow up to be?
Schools need to engage boys (or more parents need to start homeschooling!). But just because we can't control a class full of 25 rambunctious youngsters doesn't mean that we should start labelling the boys as all having something wrong just because a 6-year-old can't sit still.
What about you? Have you had issues with your sons in school? I'd really like to hear about it!
Today I got sick of making my kids rewrite their book reports because they retold the plot rather than report on the book. I felt like a horrible slug of a mother for making them do so much work.
So I created a book report outline to make it easier to do them in the future. I just don't think they understand what I was trying to make them do.
Now book reports are easy! So if you have kids in grades 5-9, and you want to get a hold of it, you can download it free here!
That is all. Back to regularly scheduled To Love, Honor and Vacuum commentary soon.
According to birth order experts, the first child encapsulates all your hopes and dreams for the future. Because they are the first, your life is totally taken up with them, and they are totally taken up with you. They don't have any older siblings to stare at or to watch, they only watch you.
Thus, they tend to become the overachievers, the ones who want to please the parents. They have strict standards for themselves, and are far more likely to be perfectionists than other kids.
When the second one comes along, though, the parents are looking for something else. They want someone who can meet their emotional needs, instead of their dreams in the long-term. So the second born is a little more carefree. And it makes sense, because as a baby they're not primarily being stimulated by over anxious parents. They're watching a toddler fall all over themselves.
Nothing is set in stone, of course, but this is a pretty good guess as to what your children will be like.
And mine fit it to a T. Rebecca is my overachiever. It's hard to get her to do something if she's afraid she may fail. Right now the homeschoolers are trying to put together a soccer team, and though she loves soccer she doesn't want to play because she doesn't think she'll be good enough. But they need her for the numbers!
My Katie, on the other hand, I have to push to get her to try and do something well. One I have to push to not try so hard; and one I have to push to try at all.
Often Katie's schoolwork is sub par, and I know she could do better, but she rushes through it. And Becca? She tries too hard.
One thing that we're really struggling with Katie with right now is piano. She can play by ear, so we have her taking lessons to learn to play by chord sheet. But she's also taking the traditional lessons, and she hates counting. Just hates it. She cries when we make her count, and she whispers it, and I just can't understand it. Can someone have a learning disability about counting? Someone who is three grade levels ahead in math? Does that make any sense?
I hate the fact that we always butt heads over piano, and I always lose my cool. But she drives me nuts sometimes. She's my cuddly baby, and she's the one that in some ways is my emotionally close one, but Rebecca is closest to my personality. Rebecca is more the one that I understand, because I am a firstborn, and my husband is a firstborn, and my mother is a firstborn, and my father is a firstborn, and Keith's father is a firstborn, and Keith's mother was the last girl followed by a string of boys that she had to raise, so she has firstborn tendencies. And then there's little Katie that none of us can figure out.
It's not her fault. And I do love her dearly. I just don't know how to motivate her because we are so different. So that is my main topic of prayer this week: how to mother her better. I don't think I'm doing a good job when it comes to motivating her for piano or schoolwork because I can't figure her out. So if you could say a prayer for me, and leave a comment, that would be great!
We went on a hike today to a lovely area just north of where I live. We're learning about the Canadian Shield in Geography, and it actually starts about twenty minutes north of me (we're in the Great Lakes Lowlands), so we saw the transition and then hiked up a big rock. It was breathtaking. But before we left for the hike I went on google to search for the trail. I entered the name of the town, the province, and the word hiking, and got a search result that looked like it was perfect. I clicked on it and graphic pornography showed up. It had obviously been hijacked.
I almost asked my 13-year-old to do the search for me. Am I ever glad that I didn't!
So here's my question: what do I do to prevent this in the future? Can you? Does something like Net Nanny protect even when a site has been hijacked?
And is Net Nanny good? We were using MSN with its parental controls, but the kids just hated it (and so did I). Everything was so slow and it was ridiculous, so we've cancelled it. I'm not worried about what they surf, because I know what my daughter does on the computer. But the chance that something like that could happen doing a perfectly innocent search has me spooked.
I'm around the net in a bunch of places right now, and I thought I'd point you to some of them!
First, Wild Parenting has run my "It's Not Easy Being Green" column. An excerpt:
I was green before green was hip. In the mid 1990s I used cloth diapers on my babies. I have always used both sides of 8 ½ by 11 paper before recycling it, so I’m one of the few who actually likes junk mail. Free paper! In my old house five composters were biodegrading all at one time, which is probably driving the new owners nuts. I love my clothesline. I have always loved hunting through thrift stores. I saved empty milk bags to use as freezer bags. And I take my bicycle, complete with the child trailer behind, to the grocery store. It’s too small for my kids, but it will do when I just need to pick up a few things.
I did all these things before David Suzuki started lecturing us about them. But I didn’t do these things just for the environment. I did them because I’m cheap. The environmental benefits were just a nice added bonus.
And at the Homeschool Blog Awards I've published a bunch of new links today, including those awesome School House Rock videos. Remember Conjunction Junction? And How a Bill Becomes a Law? Make sure you watch them with your kids!
I've got a new post up at Homeschool Blog Awards, where I write every now and then. It's got a great link to a hilarious homeschooling video, so do visit if you're a homeschooler (or a wannabe homeschooler)!
I have a new post up over at the Homeschool Blog Awards with my year in pictures! You can see all the stuff we did in our homeschool this year over there.
I am being so productive this week, you would be very proud of me!
One of the things I am tackling is my office. I have decided I am allergic to paper and it is best to get rid of it. So I've been going through all the piles and getting rid of stuff and dealing with stuff. It's awesome.
And I came across this gem, that my youngest daughter Katie wrote when she was 6. See if you can make it out:
For those of you who need a translation, here's what it says: "Once there was a eagle. She had a mother. Her mother had to work all day but sometimes she can be home and have hot chocolate. Their father can be home every day so eagle can be safe."
Do you think this child had an issue with her mother working so hard and leaving her?
Obviously she did. But the funny thing is that when Katie was 6 I was homeschooling her. Just like I do today. She saw me 24/7 all the time, except when I was out on a speaking engagement (I do a lot of women's retreats, women's rallies, and other events). I think this particular one was when I had flown down to Dallas for three days to do a TV show to promote To Love, Honor and Vacuum.
Anyway, Keith, my husband, is a doctor. He's on call a lot, and quite often we don't see him for 24 hours at a time. Last night he was called in at 2 a.m., poor man, and I haven't seen him since. So he was hardly ever home.
But that's not what Katie wrote about, because to her, I had abandoned her by going to Dallas for three days.
I'm going to keep this in a very safe place. I'm not allergic to this; I think it's hilarious. And Katie likes it, too. It's fun looking back over your kids when they were younger. I only wish I could go back, even just for 15 minutes, and hug them when they were that size again.
Oh, well. I'll have to wait for grandchildren, I guess!
I didn't really mean to start a debate on homeschooling with my preceding post, but I'm getting comments and emails about it, so I thought I'd try to tackle it again.
First, I do not believe all public schools are bad. Actually, the one my nephew is in is one of the better ones in our city. But for most kids who are very bright, a regular classroom is just not enough intellectual stimulation. How can it be with 25 kids? That doesn't mean they won't get a good education; it just means they'll be bored a lot.
And I agree with Jules' comment below that some homeschoolers are below grade level, just as some public schools are below standards. That's definitely true. Not all homeschooled kids do great (though studies do show that on the whole homeschooled kids do better than schooled kids). I do believe, though, that homeschooling, if it's done well, will produce a better educated child. Please note--"if it's done well". I know it's not always done well! But learning one on one will always take less time and will be more in tune with the child's learning styles and capabilities than a classroom with 25kids will be.
We just love homeschooling because it works great for our family. It won't work wonderfully for every family, and not every family can do it. I certainly don't think every family should! And my post below was not meant to say that. I was just announcing something that was going on in my family--we are now homeschooling my nephew, under his parents' supervision--and I'm having fun with it.
I think with every form of education there are pros and cons. The cons to homeschooling would be the lack of sports (though our group makes up for that), the lack of friends, the lack of opportunity to learn teamwork. These, though, don't outweigh what we believe are the benefits for our kids. Different families will have a different list of pros and cons and will have to weigh them accordingly.
So I have no problem if people decide differently from us.
What I do have a problem with is people emailing me or saying that I shouldn't complain about the public school system, because their children are doing fine. That's great for your children. But it doesn't change the fact that my nephew was bored and demoralized, or that my daughter was unchallenged and bored when she was in school, too.
Come to think of it, I was extremely bored all through my public school experience. So was my husband. If we had had the opportunity to learn like my daughters have, life would have been very different.
So every parent has to do what they think works best for their family. Pray about it and make the decision for your own family. We're all entitled to our opinions, and God often leads different people in different directions for different reasons. That's fine with me. I hope it's fine with all of you, too!
Anyway, enough of all this! I don't want to make this into a homeschooling blog. I'd much rather talk about housework or marriage or parenting. So we'll see what I come up with next!
We have a wonderful homeschooling group in our little community. We get together for sports, skating, track and field, and sometimes more academic subjects. The youth socialize together. It's great.
But whenever we go, my family brings the average number of children down. Most families have 7, 8, 9, 12, or even 5 kids. We had two.
Until now. My nephew, Alex, has come to join our little brood. So now we have 3!
Here they are doing math on their first day of school. They look miserable, but they were actually just hard at work. and the mugs are full of hot chocolate and marshmallows, which is how we always begin our day.
Alex is thrilled to be here so far. He was the one who asked to come. He's three weeks younger than Rebecca, but they're not at the same level because we've been homeschooling Becca all along, so she's doing high school work at this point. Alex is just as smart, I think, but he developed some sloppy habits in math in school that we're going to cure him of! I'm trying to get him through a whole math textbook in the next three months so he can move ahead and won't be in the same book next year as his cousin Katie who is three years younger!
The girls like it because it's a change. After seven years of just the two of them, it's nice to have someone else around. I think I like it for the same reason. And Alex?
He is just sick of being bored at school. He's sick of homework that has no educational value (we don't do homework. They just get their work done in school). He's tired of all the teasing and social garbage that goes on in the playground. He's tired of not being challenged.
I find school really wastes kids' minds. He could be doing stuff so far ahead if he was simply allowed to work at his intellectual pace. Keith teaches the kids one or two days a week and he's been doing chemistry with Rebecca, so he started Alex on it yesterday. It's basically a high school course, but the kids can handle it if you explain it well. And they're learning Latin and Greek.
For history, we're at the Depression. We spent about an hour yesterday talking about the Stock Market Crash and how stock markets can crash. And we talked about how banks could crash then, but not now. We didn't write a lot, but we talked a lot. They learned a ton. And he loved it. He said they never talked about anything important at school.
I don't know how long he'll stay with us. We're homeschooling the girls all the way through high school, and I don't know if he'll want to go back to school at some point. But I'll get him prepared for harder subjects, anyway. And he's just thrilled that he gets to do hard stuff!
His first comment, when we were in a meeting about homeschooling him, was, "I just want to learn as much as I can." Now that's a good attitude! I hope it lasts (in 13-year-olds you can never tell), but so far he's great. But it makes me sad for how little the kids learn in public school. What a loss of great potential! But more on this later.
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
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For those of you who need a translation, here's what it says: "Once there was a eagle. She had a mother. Her mother had to work all day but sometimes she can be home and have hot chocolate. Their father can be home every day so eagle can be safe."
