Individuals under assault

I haven't blogged our homeschool adventures much because, quite frankly, I'm spending all of my "spare" time researching, learning, and determining what is really happening in our country. The fact is, I'm not sure what legacy will be left to my children when they become adults. Will they live in the "land of the free, home of the brave" or will they live in a society where the government believes it knows better than the individual family?

The individual is under assault in favor of the "collective." If you want proof of this, just read about John Holdren, science Czar, who wrote a book called "Ecoscience" that describes how to sterilize the population through our food and water system. Or Ezekiel Emanuel, special advisor (czar) for health policy helping to construct the healthcare bills. He believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens...An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dimentia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov-Dec '96). Thirdly, read about Van Jones, our green jobs czar who "himself stated in a 2005 interview his environmental activism was a means to fight for racial and class “justice,” and that he was a “rowdy black nationalist,” and a “communist.”

If you don't know what the communist view of families is, then I would suggest you search and read on your own. I don't want anyone to take my word for it; do your own homework. Don't just read a "conservative" view or a "liberal" view; read them all and read the person's OWN WORDS. There is nothing more telling than a person's OWN WORDS.

How could we possibly have people in power with these views? Because they do not have to go through confirmation hearings. There are NO provisions in the constitution allowing a President to appoint anyone he deems necessary and yet, here we are with people of influence whom most in this country know NOTHING about and are not willing to find out.

There have been many eras in history when the common person would say "Oh, that would never happen" and yet the worst HAS happened. We have all become complacent. In the words of someone I know, "The government should run itself, I don't want to be here trying to get the government to listen to me."

Sorry, folks, but a republic does not run itself. This is why we are now here, because we didn't take notice. Our Senators are not representing us, they are constantly working towards re-election. Even though thousands upon thousands of people called their Representatives offices (in 10:1 ratio, admitted by the reps themselves) opoposing cap and trade, it was still passed in the house.

Want to learn some of the truths about healthcare, but you don't want to read the bills? Here are some fliers with PAGE REFERENCES to help you:

CNN: 5 Freedoms You'd Lose in Health Care Reform

http://www.liberty.edu/media/9980/attachments/healthcare_overview_obama_072909.pdf

http://www.deserveliberty.com/library/published/Stop_Socialized_HC.pdf

http://www.saveourcountrynow.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=127&t=1469


We are still here, plugging along. But we are concentrating on HISTORY, not the history written in the politically correct textbooks. The real history, about how Roosevelt slaughtered 6 million pigs to raise pork prices, or how he burned millions of acres in cotton to increase the cotton prices, then giving "relief" for these actions by using tax payers money for subsidies (that, by the way, didn't go to the tenant farmers--the poor people--but to the owners). History repeats itself. Read about the Great Depression, this would be a great time in history to do so.

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Brief Why? How? of Homeschooling

A friend of mine may be hearing the call to homeschool her children. She has so many questions, just as any parent has when starting the process.

Instead of a private email, I thought I'd post this here in case someone searching the internet is looking for answers to their questions. Perhaps it will not only help my friend, but other families.

WHY?

Although today the decision to homeschool is more widely accepted, there are still many people who don't believe in homeschooling. It's not uncommon to have a perfect stranger "quiz" your children to test how well they are educated at home.

Everyone has their own reasons for why, and often socialization is one of them. It is also the most widely asked question about homeschooling: "What about socialization?"

Definitions of Socialization:

Wordnet- train for a social environment; "The children must be properly socialized"

wiktionary: socialize - To interact with others; To instruct, usually subconsciously, in the etiquette of a society; To take into collective or governmental ownership

oregonstate.edu: the process by which culture is learned; also called enculturation. During socialization individuals internalize a culture's social controls, along with values and norms about right and wrong.

unk.edu: The process whereby individuals learn to behave willingly in accordance with the prevailing standards of their culture

wordnet: socialized - under group or government control; "socialized ownership"; "socialized medicine

Let's take these definitions into consideration. The first definition "training for a social environment" makes sense. How can we function as a society if we don't understand what is socially acceptable and moral. The question is: who is doing the training? Is it someone that shares your values? In most cases, a teacher has more than 10 students in a class. More often that number is closer to 20 or 25. How easy is it to teach every individual to make good moral decisions when there is one of you and 20 children? The result is that often one child is teaching another child by example. So you are not only dealing with adjusting social behavior in your own family, but you end up adjusting social issues brought in from other families. In a perfect world, elementary aged children would have rock solid morals that follow their family and the ability to influence their peers. How many adults do you know that can make good decisions when their peers are asserting pressure? Now imagine someone with little experience on this earth. If you are a family that is concerned about passing on your morals and values to your children, a homeschooling situation is optimal.

Let's consider the definitions "To take into collective or governmental ownership" and "The process whereby individuals learn to behave willingly in accordance with the prevailing standards of their culture." One of the first things I recommend to someone considering homeschooling is to read the book Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto. Written by an award-winning educator, it outlines the educational system today and how it schools children to "merely obey orders and become smoothly functioning cogs in the industrial machine." Isn't that taking us into collective ownership? The "prevailing standards of [our] culture" are not my own standards; I could rattle off a list of disagreements with societal standards, but instead I'll say that I value family, my children, modesty, commitment, charity/giving, personal accountability and working hard for what I have. If I were collectively owned, wouldn't I have to subscribe what the majority of people value? The trouble is, societal values change; what was once unacceptable becomes acceptable. I choose to educate my children to hold to their values, not change with the time because it's popular.

I address socialization first because it's the most commonly asked question. Children in a public school situation are trained to socialize with children their own age while in school. Homeschooled children are taught how to relate to all ages of children and adults during a typical school day. The parents have the opportunity to teach their own values that may or may not align with all of the social norms or prevailing standards.

What about your children having friends? Here is where parents have to leave their own insecurities behind and realize that it's not the VOLUME of friends, but the QUALITY of friendships your child finds. How many of us made friends in school with someone that was not really a good fit for us just because the person happened to sit next to us in school? In a different situation, would you have made friends with the same person? We cannot devalue the need for friendships, but children will find those in their daily lives: the neighbor, a friend in gymnastics class, a cousin, Girl Scouts/4H/Little Flowers, etc. And they will be more likely to find friendships from commonality than geography.

If you ask a homeschooling family the question "Why do you homeschool?" you will receive different answers from every family. Some prevailing answers are the lack of depth in the public schools, the lack of shared values, too much structure and not enough innovation, no parental control of content, too prevalent of a social agenda, little emphasis on American History or history in general, and the list goes on. My list evolves constantly and I'm always adding to my "Why I Homeschool" category. You can read all of my musings HERE.

If you're thinking of homeschooling and reading this, what is holding you back? I'm willing to wager it has more to do with the brain washing (only teachers who have learned to manage a classroom can teach, you're not smart enough to teach, your children need socialization, you can't teach what you're weak in) than with the facts. The truth is, if you're willing to put in the time and effort, the rewards are tenfold.

HOW?

Educational Content

This is very individual. The content of an education is dependent upon the goals, values and capabilities of the homeschooling parent.

Some parents choose to keep their children home while using all of the public education content--these are online schools that provide computers, content and testing. They are fully funded by the education system. I've seen parents very successful with this method of teaching in that the children exceed the standards of that particular school system. The bonus is that children are not subject to the socialization issues of a standard classroom and a parent doesn't have to be well-educated to be successful.

Another method is to find your own boxed curriculum. There are so many to choose from! These curriculum include teacher's editions with answers to the quizzes and tests, a student edition and often a workbook. You can find these for any subject! The beauty is that, again, you have to have some knowledge of a subject, but you don't have to particularly skilled.

Eclectic. Some parents love to find different resources on their own and don't follow any particular curriculum. With the resources available online and at the library for free, it's easy to put together a curriculum that is inexpensive. Often, though, these parents have the ability to be critical about the information available, so some good knowledge of the subjects is necessary. Some parents used boxed curriculum for certain subjects and put together their own for other areas.

Unschooling. This is a broad definition. It ranges from those who never sit at a table with their children to do "schoolwork" to those who spend every day schooling but use different methods like museum visits, book choices, or simply they study whatever the child wants to study.

These are all very broad and just touch on the "How" of homeschooling. The truth is, it can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be. It can be as expensive or as inexpensive as you choose.

So HOW do you choose? Meet other homeschooling families (join a support group or an online group, read the thousands of blogs on the internet). After learning all you can, make a choice for your family and seek out a support group that is using a similar method of education. There are unlimited resources, sample family schedules, lists and lists of field trip ideas, even free lesson plans online. The beauty is: you can change what you're doing at any time. Are you worried that changing will hurt your children? I read awhile back ( I wish I could find the original reference) that if you take an illiterate/uneducated adult who is WILLING, you can teach the information from grade 1 through grade 12 in 80 hours. Will changing course hurt you? No, and it's likely to renew your commitment to the teaching process.

Before I go any further, though, this must be said:

You can TEACH your children. YOU DO NOT EDUCATE them. They must choose to educate themselves. You can INSPIRE your children and provide them with information. You can mentor them with sharing what you know. Anything you force into them will be remembered "for the test." How much of what you learned in school do you remember? Why?

Here is my recommended reading list for parents who are considering homeschooling:

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto.

A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver DeMille

This is the book that helped us establish our educational principles and the one that reformed our education. It centers around having a mission, learning to be a leader, and education by classics and mentors. Here is more information in a previous post.

Homeschooling and the Voyage of Self-Discovery by David H Albert

The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise

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100 Classics in 3000 Days

I'm starting a new endeavour: A Classics Education. This book list is from "A Thomas Jefferson Education" by Oliver Van DeMille and is a jumping off point for a classics education. My education wasn't poor, but from reading this list, I realize my education is not rich in the classics.

THE GOAL: Complete all 100 classics in 1000 days (June 5, 2017)
That's an average of 1 book a month, in addition to my other reading endeavors .

After reading, they are marked in orange. If I've previously read them and have a good memory of them, they are marked (those that were thoroughly studied in college). If I only vaguely remember (from high school), I am rereading the book.

THE LIST:

Source: appendix A of Oliver Van DeMille's

A Thomas Jefferson Education:

Teaching a New Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-First Century, © 2000.



1. Acton, The History of Freedom

2. John Adams, "Thoughts on Government"

3. Aquinas, "On Kingship"

4. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

5. Aristotle, Politics

6. Aristotle, Rhetoric

7. Augustine, The City of God

8. Aurelius, Meditations

9. Austen, Pride and Prejudice

10. Austen, Sense and Sensibility

11. Bacon, Novum Organum

12. Bastait, The Law

13. Bastait, "What is Seen and Not Seen"

14. Benson, "The Proper Role of Government"

15. The Bible (Ongoing project)

16. Boethius, The Consolidation of Philosophy

17. Bronte, Wuthering Heights

18. Bronte, Jane Eyre

19. Carson, The American Tradition

20. Capra, The Tao of Physics

21. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (currently reading)

22. Churchill, Collected Speeches

23. Cicero, The Republic

24. Cicero, The Laws

25. Clausewitz, On War

26. Confucius, Analects

27. The Constitution of the United States (ongoing project)

28. Copnicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

29. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

30. Dante, The Divine Comedy

31. The Declaration of Independence (ongoing project)

32. DeFoe, Robinson Crusoe

33. Descartes, A Discourse on Method

34. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

35. Dickens, Great Expectations

36. Douglas, Magnificent Obsession

37. Durant, A History of Civilization

38. Einstein, Relativity

39. Emerson, Collected Essays

40. Euclid, Elements

41. Frank, Alas Babylon

42. Franklin, Letters and Writings

43. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

44. Galileo, Two New Sciences

45. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

46. Goethe, Faust

47. Hobbes, Levathan

48. Homer, The Iliad

49. Homer, The Odyssey

50. Hugo, Les Miserables

51. Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary

52. Jefferson, Letters, Speeches, and Writings

53. Keegan, History of Warfare

54. Kepler, Epitome

55. Martin Luther King, Jr., Collected Speeches

56. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

57. Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry

58. Lewis, Mere Christianity

59. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

60. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

61. Lincoln, Collected Speeches

62. Locke, Second Treatise of Government

63. Machiavelli, The Prince

64. Madison, Hamilton and Jay, The Federalist Papers

65. Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto

66. More, Utopia

67. The Magna Charta

68. Mill, On Liberty

69. Milton, Paradise Regained

70. Mises, Human Action

71. The Monroe Doctrine

72. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

73. Newton, Mathematical Principles

74. Nichomachus, Introduction to Arithmetic

75. Neitzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

76. The Northwest Ordinance

77. Orwell, 1984 Read in 1988, will read again, even if I run out of time

78. Plato, Collected Works

79. Polybius, Histories

80. Potok, The Chosen  4/09

81. Plutarch, Lives

82. Ptolemy, Algamest

83. Shakespeare, Collected Works (Read: Hamlet, MacBeth, Richard II, Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream, Merchant of Venice) Re-reading Taming of the Shrew for a Face to Face with Greatness Seminar 3/09

84. Skousen, The Five Thousand Year Leap

85. Skousen, The Majesty of God's Law

86. Skousen, The Making of America

87. Smith, The Wealth of Nations

88. Solzhenitsyn, "A World Split Apart"

89. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

90. Sophocles, Oedipus Trilogy

91. Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

92. Sun Tzu, The Art of War

93. Thackeray, Vanity Fair

94. Thoreau, Walden

95. Tolstoy, War and Peace

96. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian Wars

97. Tocqueville, Democracy in America

98. Washington, Letters, Speeches, and Writings

99. Weaver, Mainspring of Human Progress

100. Wister, The Virginian

Add ons:

101.  Little Britches, Ralph Moody  4/09

After creating this list, I'm actually excited to get started. I remember studying classics in High School and my impression was that they were "boring required reading." In retrospect, I think it was the mandatory multiple-choice tests that were boring. As an adult, the idea of reading to grow, learn and tap into the great minds of the past really motivates me.

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God answers prayers...

I think, as humans, there's a natural ebb and flow to our lives.  Just like the seasons change, we have to expect our lives to change.  If we continue to focus only on those things that are constant--or try to hold on too hard to things we think SHOULD be constant--we miss out on the opportunities God is sending our way.  
I've been asking God to bring new things into my life that will help me guide my way through the rough spot I seem to have hit with the social part of homeschooling.  Being with other homeschoolers has been such an effort;  we have to drive far to attend activities (minimum 10 miles, but generally a 20 minute drive to any activity).  A simple one hour homeschool swim class turns into a two to three hour effort.  With four little ones, it's actually an entire afternoon.
Today was a beautiful day!  It was almost 70 degrees (in the middle of January, just the opposite of other parts of the country with record lows).  We decided a park day was the prescription for our lazy morning spent watching the Inauguration.  
There was a group of moms meeting there.  After some time, the last two moms remaining struck up a conversation with me.  I learned that they had both considered homeschooling, but hadn't really pursued it any further.  We had a really nice talk and I gave them my email address to contact me.  They seemed really genuine and renewed my hope that finding homeschoolers closer to us may be possible.
I'm not sure if it was the chance encounter or if I finally got enough Vitamin D this week, but I was feeling rather renewed and positive.  So much so, I finally gave in and joined one of the committees for our Homeowner's Association.  I had to take all of the kids to the meeting at the neighborhood school and, at the beginning of the meeting, I felt like the "crazy homeschool mom with all of the kids."  But as soon as we broke out into committees, I realized God had sent me there, once again.
After spending about a half hour talking to one of the Board Members who was starting the committee and the one other volunteer, I realized that 1) I really did have something to offer and 2) the other committee member was a HOMESCHOOLING MOM that has homeschooled for 16 years and lives two blocks away!
How fantastic.  She said she'd like to get together outside of the committee as well and chat about homeschooling.  I cannot believe God sent me this opportunity to talk to someone at the "other end" of homeschooling.

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Road Trip: Arizona-Petrified Forest NP

My friend at Kathalog mentioned she loves to learn about the little-known places in the United States to visit. We've visited a few of these on our many road trips and I thought I'd share some here.

I posted about Meteor Crater in Winslow, AZ in my last post. We will work our way down I-40 and visit Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

PETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL PARK

In March of 2007, we were on a road trip with our girls to visit my grandmother in Arizona. The girls were getting restless on day two, so we decided to stop at Petrified Forest National Park. It's a nice round-trip diversion with plenty to see and do. The entrance is off of I-40 near Holbrook from the West, and nearer to Navajo on the east; you can enter from one side of the park, drive through, and loop back to I-40 easily from the other end (see the map by clicking the link above).

It is beautiful throughout the park. The visitors center has some great information and just outside of the building is what can only be described as a petrified wood garden. After getting some great information, we drove from one end of the park to the other.

Petrification (from the National Parks Service Brochure):

Distant volcanoes to the west spewed
tons of ash into the atmosphere,
carried by the wind into this area
where it was incorporated into the river
sediments. Some logs were buried by
sediment before they could
decompose. Ground water dissolved
silica from the volcanic ash and carried
it into the logs. This solution formed
quartz crystals which filled hollows,
cracks, even the interior of the cells,
and sometimes replaced the cell walls.
The process could be so exact the
resulting fossils show many details of
the logs’ original surfaces and,
occasionally, the internal cell
structures. Traces of iron and other
minerals combined with quartz during
the petrification process, creating the
brilliant rainbow of colors. Within the
larger cracks and hollows the growth
of quartz crystals was not limited in
size and larger crystals of clear and
milky quartz, purple amethyst, and
yellow citrine formed.

A few fun facts from the National Parks Page:

• Petrified Forest National Park has one of the most diverse collections of prehistoric pottery fragments in the Southwest.
• The ecosystem at Petrified Forest National Park is not desert. It's one of the largest areas of intact grassland in the Southwest
• On clear days in the Southwest, especially on crisp, cold winter days, you can see landscape features almost 100 miles away!

Are you a homeschooler thinking of visiting the park? NPS offers free online curriculum help:

http://www.nps.gov/pefo/forteachers/curriculummaterials.htm

PRINT THE BROCHURES

If you are a homeschooler, road trips are such an amazing way to experience science, history and culture. The National Parks are also a great resource. Did you know you can buy a National Parks Annual Parks pass for $80? It gets you entrance into any National Park and other Federal areas for no additional fee. Are you aged 62 or over? You can get a pass for $10....LIFETIME. And all throughout the website are lesson plans for teachers.

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Road Trip: Arizona-Meteor Crater, Winslow, AZ

METEOR CRATER National Monument

On our way to Peoria, AZ we stopped to see the Meteor Crater in Winslow, AZ. It's a place we've passed no less than a couple dozen times in the last twenty years, but for some reason we've never stopped.

It's only 6 miles off Highway 40, just a short diversion from the road trip. The building built next to the crater is quite large and houses a decent sized museum dedicated to things falling from the sky.

History:

"Approximately 50,000 years ago, on a continuous plain extending for miles in the high desert plateau of Northern Arizona, out of the northeastern sky, a pinpoint of light grew rapidly into a brilliant fireball. This body was probably broken off from an asteroid during an ancient collision in the main asteroid belt (between the planets, Mars and Jupiter) some half billion years ago. Hurtling about 40,000 miles per hour, it was on a rendezvous course with earth. In seconds, it passed through the earth's atmosphere with little loss of velocity or mass."

"The result of these violent conditions was the excavation of a giant bowl shaped cavity. In less than a few seconds, a crater was carved into this once flat rocky plain. During its formation, over 175 million tons of limestone and sandstone were abruptly thrown out to form a continuous blanket of debris surrounding the crater for a distance of over a mile."

METEOR CRATER National Monument

OUR REVIEW: We didn't get much of a chance to really spend time in the museum, but it was pretty impressive. Lots of interactive exhibits explaining the phenomenom of debris from space and the differences. There is also an actual remnant of the meteor on display--a significant size.

The view of the crater is amazing and the private owners have successfully given the viewer a great perspective of the crater. It doesn't "seem" as big as it is, until you look through the various telescopes and see the 6 foot tall astronaut at the bottom, or the boiler, crane and a manhole that was explored. Of course, they seem tiny through the viewfinder and almost invisible to the naked eye, reinforcing the actual size of the crater.

In all honesty, we didnt' spend half the time there that we wanted. My four little ones, the oldest being 6.5 years old, were tired at 2 in the afternoon when we arrived and had little patience for exploring the museum. It was a little pricey, though for myself and my 4 kids it was only $22.00. If my girls were all 6 and over, it would have been $39.

It is definitely worth the stop; where else can you see where such an event has occured? Be sure to stop when you have time to properly explore the wealth of information offered at the museum.

FUN FACTS:

On August 8, 1964, a pair of commercial pilots in a Cessna 150 flew into the crater for a closer look but were unable to climb out due to downdrafts. They ended up circling the interior until their fuel was exhausted and crash-landed. They survived their ordeal and a small portion of the wreckage not removed from the crash site remains visible to this day-Wikipedia

• Featured in the movie Starman. In this, a large spherical shaped UFO hovers over the crater.
• Featured in the movie Damnation Alley. In this, it is featured as a nuclear blast crater.
• Featured in a montage on the cover of the Midnight Oil album Red Sails in the Sunset. The crater is superimposed several times over Sydney Harbor suggesting the aftermath of a nuclear strike.
• In the novel The Martian War, Dr. Moreau and Percival Lowell take a crashed Martian scout to see the crater. It reminds the Martian of its home.
• In the novel 3001: The Final Odyssey, Frank Poole views a computer-generated model of the crater, and remembers exploring it as a child.

FUN STUFF RELATED TO METEOR CRATER:

Have some 3D glasses? View THIS IMAGE

Barringer Meteorite Crater Official Site

Play the Crater GAME

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Music

A few years ago, a friend told us about Children's Music Academy. I was a little nervous about the 3.5 year commitment to the program (it's not a contract, just a suggestion that they complete the program) but I wanted to get our oldest dd started in music.

It has been a great experience! Not only do they learn how to read music and play piano, but they sing, learn rhythm, play as an ensemble, and ear train. As parents, we are required to attend every class with our children so that we can actively participate in class and at home.

It's not inexpensive, but the education for us both has been well worth the money. After 2 years of this program I can play basic songs on the piano, which is a huge bonus in the program. I've always wanted to play piano and I'm having such fun with this program.

Our four year old is now in the program. She's been asking for the last year when she will get to start. Daddy is taking her to that class and they are both really enjoying it!

Here are a few videos of Maisie:



This is the song she's working on:

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Another one added to my "Hey, I didn't know that!"

I'm watching the closing ceremonies as China passes the torch on to London for 2012.

Did you know that London's "God Save the Queen" is the same tune as our "Let Freedom Ring"? Hmm...wonder where we got our song? LOL

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Afraid of a little competition?

Oprah's done it, Cartoon Network has done it, and now Subway.

"What?" you ask.

Exclude homeschoolers.

Oprah apologized that it was an "oversight" (do you believe that?) and the Cartoon Network, which had in 2006 opened the registration and free playground equipment to homeschoolers (we did receive a set for our homeschool group) subsequently opened contests and giveaways to only "registered public schools."

Now Subway, which is hosting a writing contest, has excluded homeschoolers.

"Contest is open only to legal US residents, over the age of 18 with children in either elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6. No home schools will be accepted"

Do they have a right to make that choice? Of course they do! Perhaps they are wondering what a homeschooling family would do with the grand prize. In our homeschooling family, or in our group, it would likely be donated to a local charity or recreational facility that needs it. There isn't a single family that couldn't do with the runner up prizes of a scholastic gift basket, a $100 gift card to subway or seeing the story published in a magazine.

They have every right to set the rules for their contest, just as all of the outraged homeschoolers have the right to not support their business.

BTW, I haven't watched Oprah in years and my kids don't even know the Cartoon Network exists. ;)

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Stellar Day

Today was one of those "perfect days." It was a quiet day at home. The three older girls and I played a money math game and I was struck by how much the girls know. Katie was counting the numbers on the dice and the pennies, Dani did the same plus counted her 5 pennies for a nickel and 10 pennies for a dime, and Maisie could do it all, including what change makes a quarter and how many quarters in a dollar. Of course, none of this is spectacular for any of the girls' ages, but for a mom it was so much fun to see.

Maisie read five of her Bob books. Then she wrote her "bug words." Then Maisie and Dani and I played "domino war" (like the card game war but with dominoes, the highest total number on the domino wins). Dani did great determining who had the highest number.

It was just a great day. Nothing amazing, just a wonderful day.

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